Your Destiny is Annulled
by Cheb
Summary: A thriller. Their fate gets derailed hard, rules shattered. What seems a harrowing confrontation at first, quickly becomes a confusing mess. Watch Ranma and the girls on a deadly, unpredictable adventure through an Original multiverse as they struggle to understand what had really happened. Part One rewritten in April 2016.
1. We came so far, hand in hand

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled v1.5**

FYI in case you wonder why our hero(in)es act too mature: it's three months since they graduated school, they are around 18 of age (as if desperate battles weren't enough). More details in Chapter Six.

(シーンブレイク)

 **Arc One  
No-holds-barred clash**

 **WARNINGS:**  
1\. I learned English all by myself, by reading fanfics. No textbooks or tutors. I can barely speak it, too.  
2\. The genre is really adventure/thriller, pity there is no such choice.  
3\. Any discrepances with Sailor Ranko by Duncan Zillman are deliberate. TL;DR: 【 _Yes, this work started as a fanfanfic of that extended series (see also Kevin Hammel, Rebecca Heineman, Arthur Hansen and VentureH). But in 2012 I decided to break away from it and so retconned some. I have no bad feelings towards these stories and don't rerget investing a lot of effort in my complete Russian translation for Rebecca Heineman's Tunnel Vision. But the raving purism that gradually overcame me left me no choice._ 】  
5\. version 1.5: in April 2016 I rewrote Part One to remove a thing that had no justified place in this fic and to return the plot to its initially intended shape (dudes, **never** publish without having about four chapters in your buffer. Otherwise you can easily corner yourself into writing something you don't want to as the gears of plot logic catch you to drag into the grinder kicking and screaming). The removed chunk should be published as a separate AU side-story.

 **Chapter 1  
We came so far, hand in hand...**

(シーンブレイク)

 _(Tokyo, Senjuku ward, summer of 1995)_

Sun is pouring heat from high up in the bottomless blue sky. Towering skyscrapers cast shadows at the roofs of high-rises below turning the chaos of antennae, vent boxes and dormant advertising boards into a veritable labyrinth of light and shadows. Something is flickering in this labyrinth, dashing from roof to roof, too fast for human eye to see.

Eventually a white-red blur freezes turning out to be a redheaded girl in a white, red-trimmed outfit not unlike cheerleader's. She is listening warily, shifting around half-crouched, ready to dash away. An industrial air conditioner behind her, thrice her height, is humming loudly, straining against the summer heat.

Suddenly, an another shadow comes, all blurry flickers of white and blue and skin tones. The redhead blurs in a flurry of blows, then both fly away rebounding from the roofs and advertising boards like crazied balls in a superhuman ping-pong. Surprisingly, there is to damage to the fragile constructs as if both combatants were really weighless.

But there's a sudden pause. Two girls freeze on a narrow edge of an advertising board. They are in the shadow of a skyscraper, but the world around is suffused with light. In the gap between skyscrapers, the white cone of Mount Fuji could be seen, floating in the blue expanse.

The second girl - in a similar but simpler outfit - has short raven hair. Her eyes are narrowed, glinting with the trill of challenge. Her white leotard is supplied with a dark blue sailor collar and a pleated mini-skirt of the same color ending just above mid-thigh. There are dark blue knee-high boots and short white gloves ending in wrist-hugging dark blue rings. The big bows on her chest and the small of her back seem light sky-blue at the first glance, but there are subtle shifts of color playing on their curves, like those of butterfly's wings. The jewel at the center of her front bow is sparkling, throwing off flashes of deep, rich colors like a barely restrained rainbow.

The redhead's hair is tied in a pigtail reaching down to her shoulder blades. There is an insufferable grin on her face. They are both short and atletic, but this one is slightly shorter and stockier and definitely curvier, her opponent looking boyish in comparison. Her seifuku if a bit more elaborate: the same white leotard has a red sailor collar and segmented shoulder pads like tiny featered wings, Her white gloves are coming from under simple golden bracers. A pair of crimson sandals is hugging her legs with rings of leather straps connected with golden studs to the central strip running from between her toes up almost to the girl's knee. Her pleated skirt is white, outlined with scarlet piping and double trim of scarlet and crimson. Her bows are crimson, the oneon her back trailing two quite long ribbons while the one on her chest is hugging rather peculiar jewel like a bright yellow four-pointed star of solidified flame.

The momentary lull is over, both girls blur at once. There is only place for a head-on collision on the narrow edge, they exchange blows with machinegun-like crackle. Jumping apart, they both dive for the roof to begin a mad game of play tag between the vent blocks, fire exits and other equipment. The raven haired girl is zipping around like crazy, it seems impossible to keep track of her as she is blatantly ignoring the laws of physics. It's like inertia is not about her. The redhead is dashing around pith pointed laze, deflecting all blows aimed at her so easily it is clear she is reading her opponent's moves quite a bit forward.

But here the redhead jumps up to an advertising board and rebounds towards the next rooftop, tumbling through the air in a deliberately wide and slow arc. The bait is so glaringly obvious that surprise flashes briefly on her face when the opponent takes it zipping headlong into the prepared trap.

Leaving her element, the raven haired girl is barreling through the air to intercept the redhead.

(シーンブレイク)

She was always fast. So fast that she kept outrunning herself, ever looking an awkward, ham-handed gorilla. Her innate speed, which she barely understood herself, had been negating itself like a car skidding off the road going into a turn too fast. The cooking failures filling everyone around her with dread, the constant stumbling and sprained ankles, the ugly mutant towels and other horrors of handicraft — these all, as it turned out later, stemmed from the hurry-scurry, from inability to control her own speed. And the worse she did, the harder she pushed for success driving herself deeper into the vicious circle.

She couldn't say herself why it was enraging her so much when he called her slow.

Accepting the challenge of the purple-haired amazon she suffered a shameful defeat. Shameful not because that girl was two or three times stronger and knew techniques of martial shiatsu. Oh no. Her shame was in opening the battle with a classical move designed for a slow and strong enemy, classically losing against the fast and agile Chinese bane. In putting everything into a straight right punch, utterly transparent and visible from a kilometer away. Granted, if it connected... _If._ ·The amazon avoided it by jumping over her head, just like her fiance did in their first sparring. Only this time it didn't end with just a friendly finger jab at the back of her head.

No, the purple-haired bane wasn't 'superhumanly' fast as her exaggeration-loving future father-in-law was telling. She saw it perfectly clear: the opponent landing behind her, the two hands blurring towards her head. She just couldn't do anything, overextended, completely opened like an unskilled newbie.

Then there was a flash in her head, like a lightning. And the blackness of unconsciousness. She learned later how the Chinese girl had brainwashed her, working for almost a minute on her insensate body paralysed by a double finger strike at her temples. Fifty six seconds, what's 'superhumanly fast' here? She now could do better, having gone through the Chestnuts Fist training, having long ago defeated that rival. But the lesson she did learn - slowly and with too many repeats - but she did learn it. The speed alone wasn't enough, even having finally mastered her speed, her innate birthright. note 1

(シーンブレイク)

Colliding mid-air the girls merged into a vicious furball, fighting to get the upper hand while the roof was still ten meters away. Arms and legs were flashing in a whirlwind of techniques that would make Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee die of envy. Strikes able to shatter a concrete slab sounded like a machine-gun fire. The raven-haired one fought viciously, but out of her element, her speed advantage mostly useless in mid-air, her struggle was futile against the redhead's advantage in experience and mastery. Abusing their uncanny regenerative ability able to mend even broken bones in a matter of hours if not minutes, the pigtailed sailor-suited warrior held nothing back, unleashing a hailstorm of potentially crippling blows at the blue-skirted girl. Cornered, the raven-haired girl was trying to give as best as they got, pusing herself past her limits. She held for a little while while out of sheer stubbornness, but the gap in their power was too great.

They would never have employed this insanely effective - and dangerous - method of training back when they were but mere mortals. Now, it was a completely different matter. Not a year ago they had ascended, becoming Sailor Senshi, the magical champions of their planet.

Finally the tangle of girls slammed into the roof cracking it a little from the impact and raising a cloud of dust.

When the dust finally settled, the raven-haired warrior found herself face down in an unbreakable submission hold, her hand wrenched back painfully, a hard knee stabbing into the small of her back.

She made a half-hearted attempt to get free, then slumped in defeat: "All right, you win."

Both were breathing raggedly, worn and exhausted.

"Of course! I'm the best!" Sailor Sol, mundanely known as Ranma Saotome, was obnoxious as usual.

"Yeah, yeah. And who won before that? Just you wait!" Sailor Iris, mundanely known as Akané Tendou, was stubborn as always, never backing off, even when prudent.

"I'll always be better!" Sol informed her, releasing the hand of Iris. The raven-haired girl rolled onto her back, but Sol didn't hop off her, ending up straddling her waist. Iris blushed slightly when the fiery-haired nuisance bent down, looking at her from inches away... then broke the magic by pulling down her eyelid and sticking out her tongue. Iris giggled, squirming under the feather-light weight of her soul-mate. Their oh-so-intimate position made her remember, and she laughed, unable to hold it. What a great irony: when they first found themselves in this position, she wasn't amused at all...

(シーンブレイク)

That was the year of fear and anger. The year of strife and looming menace. The year when she waged the crusade against her natural enemy.

It's hard to believe that just a few words of that idiot were enough to rally them. Rejected by her for an uncounted time, he had his revenge in such a twisted way... Or it wasn't revenge and he just tried to achieve something. Who could know the ways his thoughts meander through Kunou-sempai's brain eternally clouded with samurai romance?

One way or another, they had accepted the idea that the one who beat her would date her. They grabbed at that idea with an unhealthy vigor, unhealthy as everything about them. And so, day after day, month after month, she had to fight her way through a crowd of excited males. But they didn't stand a chance against her, even those wannabes from the karate club. Every day she entered the schoolyard leaving a heap of groaning bodies behind.

And there, each time, she was challenged by the instigator of this all. The one truly able to hold his own against her. And they fought, fist against wooden sword, and each time she won.

But the nagging doubt remained. Kunou clearly held back against her. Was it a noble gallantry? Or was the accursed male just biding his time, playing with his prey like a cat with a mouse? You never know what these creatures are thinking.

She had to be constantly on her guard, always tense. The enemy, ever watchful, lurked in the dark corners, waiting for a moment of weakness. The enemy peeked at times into the girls' locker room, receiving a united rebuff — but never giving up, never stopping salivating at her, always following her with their hungry eyes.

She got used to supplant her fear with rage, her temper rapidly worsening as a result. Akané had only one relief. An heir to a true martial arts school with its own doujo, she was the best fighter around. No one could best her.

And then her world shattered.

First, a girl appeared in their home, a girl with her fiery hair in a Chinese pigtail. That girl defeated her with a frightening ease. It was like fighting a phantom. 'It's good that you aren't a guy', she told her. The ominous, prophetic words. But in that moment all she felt was relief. She was horrified to even think what would happen to her if one of these... male-things had such a battle prowess.

And then she entered the bathroom, the place she subconsciously deemed safe, where she could relax... She entered there disrobed, defenseless, not ready... Only to meet, face to face, a creature of her nightmares.

But that wasn't the most terrifying part, oh no. Soon she found out that the fiery-haired girl she had almost made friends with was a lie. That she was in truth a cunning male cursed to turn into a girl with a splash of cold water. And worse: he was her fiancé. In other words, she was designated fair game for him.

Her father betrayed her, just like that, sacrificing her to the beast for the sake of 'uniting the schools'. The sisters... Those she could understand. After all, who should stay in the line of fire if not her, the martial artist of the three?

Many things transpired after that. She came to terms with Ranma being around, almost befriending him. On the surface he was a decent person, if obnoxious. But she never forgot his true nature, lurking in the dark depths, waiting just for the right moment to overcome him. He was a weremale, a person with a rapist locked inside.

And he was hopelessly better than her.

Akané felt herself living in a house with a pet man-eating tiger. There were no safe places for her anymore. The fear built up bit by bit, boiling away with anger, pouring out with the brutal beatings the cement blocks received from her in the doujo. Yes, during the day she ruled, beating the beast again and again, subduing it, proving to herself that she was the one in control, that the beast was tamed.

But the night... The night was the time of predators and were-creatures. She got an iron-clad proof one night. Waking up to find the... male-thing lying on top of her, already turned. Already ravenous. She felt his carnivorous heat even through the blanket separating them.

The horrifying situation was discharged via brutal beating of the intruder with a bamboo sword. She barely heard his attempts to explain, seeing red in her fear-induced brutal rage. He was probably saying something about P-chan... note 2

(シーンブレイク)

"Hey, why are you laughing?" Sol asked her in confusion.

"Nevermind. I just remembered how we first met," Iris replied waving her concerns away. "Just to think of it, for how long I was afraid to be left alone with you!"

Sol just blinked at first in confusion. Then she got it and frowned, offended. But the laugh of Iris was too contagious, and soon both were laughing out loud. The irony here was truly epic.

"We lost so much time," Iris drawled looking into the bottomless sky.

"Not a big deal, we now have all the time in the world," Sol said, smirking arrogantly. "Kinda destiny and stuff."

"Watch it," Iris warned her. "You won't even notice as it gets into your head, you'll get careless and get yourself killed stupidly. I will..." she stuttered, "hurt then."

They had had a couple episodes where Sol missed her death by a hair's breadth by using her forbidden ultimate technique. Iris didn't want a repeat of that.

"Don't worry," Sol tried to divert the incoming blues. "You'll just ask Pluto to rewind time, and..." She stopped short seeing her words having a reverse effect.

"I don't trust her," Iris said darkly. "Keeping us in the dark, withholding important things from us..."

(シーンブレイク)

They performed a miracle. They struck Sailor Galaxia down. And the victory tasted like ashes. Sunshine emerged through the dissipating darkness, its radiance shining upon Eternal Sailor Moon... shining upon the ruins stretching up to the horizon, the crushed remains of what only this morning had been the capital of Japan. The decorative pseudo-angelic wings on Usagi's suit looked like a mockery, her face full of deep, unquenchable sadness.

There were no bodies on the streets. People whose Star Seed is torn out just vanish into the thin air as they cease to be. Those few who were especially unlucky, whose destruction was stopped in the last moment, they turned into monstrous mockeries of themselves, into _phages_ ·whose Star Seed had returned, blackened by the brief exposure to the real world, corrupted by its own impurity.

The insane phages roamed the devastated land destroying each other. Hunting the rare human survivors. Thousands of phages across Japan. Millions across the world. And only Usagi was able to turn them back into people, by using all her strength. One at a time. Maybe a dozen or two in a day.

The darkness was gone and the sun shining on the planet that became one immense graveyard. Humankind was entering a new era and its future had never been this bleak during all its history.

Iris sat curled up from the pain in her heart, clutching at Sol like a life-line. She didn't even have the strength to cry. Everyone was silent, crushed by the magnitude of the disaster. In the dead silence they could hear from afar the yelling of phages full of insane merriment.

That's why, when Sailor Pluto appeared suddenly from hell knows where like a jack-in-the-box — Pluto, who had hung in parts unknown all this time — and proclaimed, with that insufferable condescendence of hers, that she would sacrifice her life to make everything right... Iris didn't feel any gratitude towards her. Iris saw red, she wanted to grab the woman by her collar and ask why she hadn't intervened before!

She did just that when they stood amidst the intact Tokyo, and everything was again right in the world, and her sisters were alive, and Ranma's mom was alive. To her outrage, Setsuna replied that she had no idea what had just happened and vanished saying that she had to check the records of the Space-time Door!

Akané's resentment towards her just grew from that.

(シーンブレイク)

Ami walked a crowded Juuban street recalling her recent talk with Pluto. Of the whole team, only she was able to somewhat understand, or at least imagine, the complexity of the matters the lone Senshi had to deal with.

The multi-dimensional force fields, the mind-numbingly complex dependency graphs. The system so complex that a human brain could grasp only a tiny part of it at a time, leading to the dangerous temptation of building and operating a simplified model. The need of complex transformations beyond a mere mortals' ability — just to get a representation suitable for the human senses. Despite having some understanding of the dimensional physics, having built a working portal by scientifically enhanced trial and error herself, the time was still beyond her grasp. She even doubted if Pluto herself had a full understanding of it.

There was one more thing only Ami could fully comprehend and feel sympathetic for. Not so long ago, Setsuna had made a very tough choice. The right one, but still weighing heavily on her.

For thousands of years Pluto stood a lone sentinel beside the Door. Staying beyond the time flow, she was able to look into the future, to change the past. Separated from the world, she had a great freedom of action, her own thread of fate not being woven into the fabric of time. But could a human being withstand such a burden of loneliness? Could one who withstood it remain human?

Pluto had made her choice, joining the battle, joining the goings of the world. Making herself a part of it. The Senshi gained a mighty comrade in arms. Pluto gained something priceless: her friends, her family.

And lost nine tenths of her abilities.

Woven into the fabric of time, she could no more look into the future freely. Knowing too much became an impermissible luxury for her; it could create a paradox and destroy everything she held dear.

Giving the team her power of a Senshi, Setsuna deprived the team of an ally able to shuffle their very fate.

But maybe this was for the better?

"I fear to imagine that somebody could be foolish enough to meddle with Time just for their convenience", Setsuna told her. "Any manipulation comes with a price — a price usually much heavier than any gain one gets."

Ami expressed her surprise. There were two times when Pluto had acted completely contrary to these words, first allowing the Senshi to travel into the future, second rewinding the time itself back. It was the mysterious Senshi of the Underworld, after all, who saved the majority of the Earth population all but exterminated by Galaxia. And after having done that she said these things?

"I'm but a human," Setsuna replied with a sad smile. "I cannot always act as the cold logic dictates. When a mortal danger threatens everything dear to me, I'm unable to think of possible consequences or the price to pay afterward... The very fact that I continue to exist is a miracle. I'm glad but... also scared. Because it means someone has yet to pay for what I have done."

(シーンブレイク)

Ami started, awoken from her reminiscences. What was that, someone screaming nearby? Horrified people running in other direction triggered a conditioned response. Dodging into a narrow side alley she transformed and opened up her computer to begin scanning right from the cover. Looking at the data she frowned: there was only random static. Was it some sort of jamming, or...? Mercury hastily sneaked to the alley exit, carefully peeking outside. What she saw made her jerk back and flatten herself against the wall, her heart slamming against her chest.

A shaky finger pressed the emergency all-call button on the communicator. "Mercury here." she said with a strange aloofness, noticing a tinge of panic in her voice. "I need support _now_! I'm right in the center of the shopping district, there's a kaiju-class snail attacking! I repeat: a giant monster, I'm unable to scan it! It already got hostages! I'm coming out! Mercury out!"

(シーンブレイク)

September 27, 2009. 40percent rewritten March 17, 2012. Finally re-translated April 01, 2012. Retconned in half January 30, 2016. 20percent Rewritten again March 7, 2016.

 **Comments:**

 **1**  
A canonic fact: Akané managed to see as Shampoo strikes her from behind. Moreover, the brainwashing took fifty-six seconds — I checked it by both the Japanese original of the manga and the VIZ translation — not "five or six" as some ham-handedly made anime subs say.

Meaning Shampoo knocked Akané out first, then performed brainwashing on her unconscious body. Otherwise Akané would at least try to resist during that almost a minute.

 **2**  
However important for understanding Akané's character, the signs — rare but undeniable — that she was afraid Ranma would rape her, these were mercilessly censored out of the anime. Remember that story with hypnotic mushrooms? Where Akané sits watching some musical playing the thematic "yapp-pa-pa", then she sneezes and Ranma _!glomps!_ ·her? Well in the manga she was watching a late-night movie nervously annihilating cookies as on the screen, a guy started tearing clothes off a hapless girl. And right then Ranma glomped her. While they were all alone in the house. Just imagine how bad a scare it should have been for her, worse than a werewolf suddenly jumping off the screen into your room!

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— OSMQEP  
— Hraefn - huge thanks for an in-depth constructive critic  
— Climhazard  
— Н. Кута  
— Kinematics  
— LawOhki  
— Orphus users (139 bugs so far)


	2. Mercury vs Abomination

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled v1.5**

FYI in case you wonder why hero(in)es act too mature: it's three months since they graduated school, they are around 18 of age (as if desperate battles weren't enough to mature). More details in Chapter Six.

(シーンブレイク)

 **Chapter 2,  
Mercury vs Abomination.**

The monster was resembling a snail in shape. If one had a wrinkly sphere of flesh in stead of the shell, an ugly face on the end of its muzzle and four octopus tentacles in stead of eye-stalks, suckers and all. It was also in the process of ripping a bus in half, being itself larger than it.

There was no time to analyze further: there were children screaming inside the bus, metal groaning as it crumpled in the grip of the tentacles, the appendages obviously unaffected by the broken glass.

The lone Senshi ran out to the street shouting a challenge to distract it: "Stop, you evil creature!"

So what if her voice was a bit shaky? The giant monster dropped the bus as it growled in annoyance, so it was worth it. The bus crashed to the ground loudly, she desperately hoped no one got hurt. She was so not looking forward to fighting this thing: its power level was a complete unknown, but probably quite high, given its size. Her inability to scan it was promising nasty surprises.

"Ahhh, finally someone worth digesting!" the monster gurgled in a distorted but obviously male voice as it — he — stared at Sailor Mercury. So this was a person then, not a mindless beast. Which was much worse. His gaze made her shudder as she suddenly felt too edible. Him licking his lips wasn't helping. "I was growing tired of these bland canned goods," he pointed at a gutted car with one of his tentacles and she saw with growing horror an empty shoe laying next to the ruined vehicle. "They dissolve too quickly, you see. But you, metahumans - superheroes, magical girls, what ever - are different. Why, I had that guy once, it took a whole hour just for his skin to melt..."

So he was ranting, which was good. Very good, Mercury thought as she tuned the disturbing monologue out. Now to get him away from the bus. She decided against using her fog, not while helpless people were in his reach. So, baiting then? The snail-like body was not looking particularly agile or even intimidating, if not for the scale. The body, elongated, was roughly the size of a subway car, three meters wide and little over twenty long, while the sphere of flesh that sat on top of it near the tail was the size of a small house, five meters in diameter. The whole organism weighed as much as four main battle tanks, Mercury approximated, two hundred tonnes given it was solid and had the average density of flesh.

She was unsure if she could even harm something this big. Besides the sheer damage-soaking potential, his flesh must have been several times stronger than natural, for him to shrug off the square/cube law that easily. Super-large animals were always like that, strengthened by either magic or ki, otherwise unable to even exist not crushed by their own weight.

His four octopus tentacles looked like his main and only weapon. Two four-meter ones at his temples, two shorter ones at the sides of his chin. Figuratively speaking, as his face looked notably like that of Jabba the Hutt: bulging eyes half hidden by wrinkly eyelids, a wide mouth and no nose at all. All four tentacles were sturdy and tapering, twice wider at the base than her torso.

What she was sure of, he could crush that bus into paste just by moving over it. It would be unwise to provoke him. And still no luck scanning him, there was some sort of stealth field making him look like a blob of static. Maybe if she got closer...?

"Hey, are you listening to me?" the monster finished indignantly. "Who have I been working hard to terrify here...? Food these days!"

This was bad, he was eying the bus again. Abandoning further planning for the moment, Mercury darted closer, a glorified bait. With hostages so close by and monster so intelligent and vile, she wouldn't put it past him to kill the hostages if she tried attacking from a safe distance as she'd _vastly_ ·preferred, thank you very much.

The front of the enemy's body rose off the ground allowing the head more freedom of movement. "So, the chase begins," the monster commented flatly. "Where you valiantly lure me away from the bland ones. Well, let's oblige the rules of the first course." He whipped his head around trying to catch her with two longer tentacles. She dodged easily and jumped back a little. He started crawling towards her at the speed of a jogging man, literally a snail's pace for him.

"Why are you doing this?" she tried reasoning with the enemy. It rarely helps but often provides useful insight. Especially with the chatty ones.

"Gourmet reasons," he replied slashing at her again. "And let's leave it at that."

"So, just for fun?" she growled with anger. "Abomination." Unlike many people thought, Ami was a quite emotional girl. She just tended to hide this well out of politeness and to let logic override most of her emotional urges. Close quarters combat like now, though, was mostly too fast for logic to work. Here reflexes and muscle memory ruled supreme, thanks to Ranma and his training.

One tentacle intersected with a lamppost with a sound both meaty and metallic, bending the steel pipe a little and uprooting it slightly, the pavement around its base cracked. To inflict this much damage at such relatively small speed, the tentacle should have had the inertia of lead, not flesh. So, this confirmed the strengthening, also alerting her to the fact that it worked in unexpected ways.

"What could I say?" he replied nonchalantly, still trying to turn her into a sack of bones. "We demons are all like that."

So, a demon then. That explained things. He was becoming more dangerous with each passing moment, decreasing the speed of his attacks and moving only his tentacles, much harder to read than the lumbering body. He was reacting faster and faster, anticipating her moves better and better. No doubt still playing with her, hiding his true strength. She disengaged, mostly to have a few seconds to think.

The demon stopped as well. Then he began turning around commenting snidely: "Baiting only works when you keep doing it." He eyed the bus that was barely past his tail.

Darn it! Mercury dashed forward closing the distance again. Two tentacles slashed at her as usual, with enough force to break bones if the hit connected. It was becoming increasingly hard to play his game and not get hit. Trying to break away would result in him stopping, with each time taking longer and longer to start moving again. She was trying to enter a trance-like state, pausing all thoughts to let her combat reflexes run unimpeded and rerouting all higher mental functions to having a detached view of the surrounding area. The street was beginning to be clogged with abandoned cars, which was mostly a bad thing as he could hit these for bigger effect than trying to just hit her. He was flicking the vehicles at her like empty cardboard boxes and trying to beat them from under her feet if she tried using cars as spring-boards. Then he ducked his front lower and started gathering a car rampart by dragging the vehicles along instead of flattening them

"You see it now?" the demon asked as he casually built a three-hit combo that anticipated both her feint and the following dodge, missing her by centimeters. "Your fate is sealed. Your own do-goodness chains you better than I could even do. If you get away, I'll return to feasting on the bland ones. So you will continue baiting me until you make that one mistake. Then it's digestion time!"

A hundred meters from the tail to the bus. This had to suffice, she needed a breather badly. Mercury broke away by jumping straight back out of reach of the tentacles. Now to form a—

"Got you." A tentacle flicked her forehead almost gently, just staggering her instead of sending her flying with a broken neck. Her visor and tiara disappeared in a burst of alien power, sharply diminishing her sensory capabilities: the jewel in the tiara wasn't there for show, it was a focusing crystal for the sixth sense, sort of an artificial third eye.

How...? She jumped away on sheer reflexes, avoiding a second, even more elongated tentacle. Of course, he could stretch them!

"That's right. Be nervous. Be afraid. Make mistakes." The demon grinned. "I wonder—"

Bang! Bang! Bang! three shots sounded. Mercury glanced over her shoulder to see two policemen about ten meters behind her, some twenty away from the demon. Too close! And of course bullets did not have any effect whatsoever.

"No! Run!" she screamed desperately. "You will get yourselves killed!"

"This is our duty, young lady!" one of them shouted back as he took cover in a shop entrance, firing his three remaining shots then ducking inside to reload his revolver. His partner took cover behind some cars.

"No!" she yelled. "It's suicide! A nine millimeter round isn't enough to stop _me_ , much less—"

There was a blur of movement that ended in a powerful crash. Now there was a crumpled car embedded deep inside a ruined storefront where a door and the policeman have been. The demon was flexing his bottom tentacles, heretofore unused.

"Run!" she repeated to the surviving policeman as she concentrated on the enemy. If the man lived or died was up to him now.

To her frustration, six more shots thundered in a slow succession, all bullets unerringly hitting the big eyes of the demon. "Now, _that_ ·is just impolite," he commented as he rubbed at his eyes blinking flattened bullets away. He made to crawl towards the shooter. "Now running away." He stopped. "Let us test whose ranged attack is stronger, then." And he vomited a focused stream of steaming liquid.

Mercury dodged stray droplets by leaping aside. There was a splash-hiss from behind, and a short scream of agony. She dared a glance back. There was a row of cars and other unrecognizable objects hissing and melting quickly, covered in bubbling and steaming slime. One of the unrecognizable objects may have been a human skeleton — it crumbled too fast in the receding pool of slime that ate a hole down the pavement.

"Don't worry," the demon reassured her. "My stomach acid is much less concentrated. _Your_ ·end won't be as disappointingly quick."

Shuddering, she noticed emergency workers scrambling to get kids out of the bus. So _that_ ·was what this all was about! She felt like crying. Those two brave, selfless fools! They should have just let her do _her_ ·work, instead of buying no more that a few seconds of distraction at the cost of their lives.

This left Mercury with a tough decision to make. The task of baiting the demon away was, she was sure now, beyond her capabilities. The next time she tried to get close and personal, she was guaranteed go be caught. But the emergency workers were moving with painful slowness. And the bus was in range of his vomit weapon.

"I see what you are thinking," the demon warned her. "Should you use your own ranged attacks? I advice against it. If we duel and you get hit I'd lose a fine meal. That would be just disappointing."

"I'd like to try," she said coldly, preparing to dodge as she launched her attack. "Shine Aqua Illusion."

Casting her magic while cartwheeling away was hard, but doable. No harder than doing it without the verbal component.

On the positive side, this let her live and not become a part of the puddle of caustic goo now stretching in a wide line between the spot where she had been and the spot where she had landed before leaping away again. Clever bastard, anticipating her movement even though she jumped only after he let his slime flying. He just adjusted his aim mid-vomiting. This was capital B bad, dodging a stream was an order of magnitude harder than dodging individual projectiles. Dodging a stream that anticipated your moves and could easily box you in both by the stream itself and by turning wherever it hit into swathes of deadly traps? Impossible. The available area was already reduced, with any ranged exchange promising to end in a no-win situation.

On the negative side, her underpowered spell failed to have any effect whatsoever. Oh, it engulfed the demon's face including the tentacles and froze, covering his muzzle in ice. It was when the ice crumbled away in two seconds flat leaving no mark that she knew futility.

It was time for the hidden ace in her sleeve, Mercury decided. In fact, she had no other options: the demon was turning around to look behind him. "Shabon Spray!" Fog exploded out from her, flooding the street, the world losing most of its color, the sounds becoming muted.

At least it was for her. For anyone other than her designated allies, the fog was impenetrable, the sounds dying completely, most demons losing their sixth sense, the fog playing tricks with them, and swarms of weak demonic things simply dying. The beauty of this technique was in the ability of its blinding component to work on magic-resistant enemies as well. Indirect action and all that.

Thankfully, it worked on this one just fine.

"This is just not fair," the demon pouted. "You are supposed to suffer fear, then despair, then pain of my stomach acid, then final horrified realization as I digest your soul too. Not succeed in evading me." He tried turning here and there, peering through the fog. "Cannot see at all... What a clever trick!" He stretched his longer tentacles out touching the walls. "But, as you can see, this is a narrow street. I do not _have_ ·to see!" He began moving again. Thankfully, towards her and away from the bus. She was content of just backing away, unseen. The street was becoming less cluttered as people were able to drive away from this part leaving only those cars that were parked or damaged beyond mobility.

"This hide and seek is becoming tiresome," the demon said forty meters later, his voice filled with ire. "Just for that, behold my true form."

His true form? Mercury tensed. The emergency workers were still pulling kids out of that bus! With the demon navigating the narrow street by touch, he could pinpoint the hostages with relative ease. Was he going to shoot back at them from his tail? Grow more tentacles? Take to the sky?

What happened next, was much worse. The fleshy orb sitting on top of the long body pulsed, writhing, then burst with a wet sound exploding in a tidal wave of glistening, pulsing, undulating worm-like shapes, not unlike a titanic pile of spilled intestines. Rolling out ponderously, this mass crushed storefronts as it flowed inside the buildings, its smooth, pulsing tendrils wrapping around supports. Where one found purchase, more flowed up along it. In seconds the entire street was being flooded!

Mercury stumbled away from it, off balance in more than one sense. How fast could this mass go? How far was he able to spread it? Were these new things covered in contact poison like jellyfish tentacles? Were these really tentacles limited by their length or independent worms limited by nothing? What if there were still people in those buildings?

The last two questions, sadly, were replied soon as horrified screams reached from inside the buildings. The flow of the writhing mass shifted, it began contracting in places, flowing back. Soon four struggling people emerged, being dragged by the — she saw it now — swarm of glistening worms. Groping blindly, contracting, grasping at each other, the parts of the whole were guided by one will as they quickly dragged their prey, passing humans along faster than the worms themselves could move.

"This fog is so not preventing me from hunting for more bland stuff," the demon commented leaning down and squinting through the fog to see his prey up close in detail. There were two nondescript salarymen, a young woman, and a boy of around ten years or so. "Not bad, I'd say," he concluded, licking his lips. "That one is a bit on the scrawny side, but—"

"Shine Aqua Illusion!"

A jet of water hit the worms around the boy like a whip before freezing them solid. Mercury was overjoyed to see that these things, unlike the demon's main body, were quite susceptible to her magic.

The retaliatory jet of enraged vomit missed her widely as she rushed towards the enemy, not away from him, to finish the job. Jumping precisely over the writhing expanse, Mercury landed on the small frozen patch. A well placed kick shattered the frozen worms, then she was away, carrying the rescued kid to safety.

"Here," she handed the boy to policemen forming a cordon, startled by her sudden appearance from the fog. "Please pass this along to the rescue workers on the other side: hurry up, he is flooding the street with worms!" She turned to leave.

"Wait!" an elder policeman called after her. "What happened to my two foolhardy subordinates?"

"Dead, mercifully quick," she replied grimly. "Beware, the demon is very intelligent! Bullets to the eyes have no effect. Cover has no effect, he can smash through any wall here with thrown cars or large streams of acid. Sorry, I have three more hostages to save!" she rushed back into the fog.

Despite the deaths, despite the losses Mercury was confident now. This thing could be fought, it could be beaten!

What she found, though, made her blood turn cold: there were only two people left, a man and a woman. The man was screaming: "Help! Someone please help! It is going to devour us!"

Of the second man, there were only shreds of clothing and one shoe bouncing on the writhing mass. She was too slow! That death was on her conscience! Was he absorbing them with these things? She had to free them _now_! An ordinary attack wouldn't do, she had to pull out the big guns to save both at once.

"Mecrury Aqua—"

The stream of vomit was murderously on target this time. She barely dodged. How...?

No time to think. Mercury had to jump away immediately after landing, noting absently that this was the second time the stream of vomit wasn't hissing and eating away at the pavement, it just splattered wetly. She landed again, as softly as she could. The demon did not attack. He was unmoving, his head tilted, even the quagmire of worms slowed its writhing.

Could he have detected her by hearing? Mercury crouched, ready to tumble aside, trying to get her heartbeat under control. The fog was dampening all sounds, the sobs and screams of the captives were reaching her muffled. This was normal. But the wet sounds from the writhing intestine-worms were reaching sharp and clear. This was definitely not normal.

Did he learn to negate the dampening nature of the fog? Could he be seeing her too, just pretending he wasn't? Mercury was standing perfectly still, not risking even a fraction of a second of distraction.

The demon 'hmmph'ed as he reached down for the trapped people with his octopus tentacle. Thus providing Mercury with a wellspring of information: First, sounds traveled unobstructed clearly, and this effect was most probably bi-directional. Second, he was still blind. Third, he could sense everything his worms touched. Fourth, he wasn't absorbing anything with them, it was merely a catching net.

Mercury smiled angrily as she mentally listed her tasks: Confirm experimentally that he was tracking her by sound. Develop tactics of combating him. Save the hostages. Hold until reinforcements arrive while gathering enough information that they could destroy the bastard as soon as her comrades arrive.

She crouched low, putting herself in the position for a low start, presenting her right side to the enemy. If he could only hear her, he would shoot at her current position. If he was also able to see her, he would correct his aim in the direction she made a point of facing. Glancing to her left, she noticed two spots of worms spreading, right where his two last shots hit. Mercury was already being surrounded. Clever, but that would not help him. She was confident in her abilities now.

She gulped down the lump in her throat and stomped her foot loudly as she shouted: "You won't get away with this, villain!". Then she stilled, utterly tense, waiting for a slightest hint of movement from the demon.

The gray, slug-like silhouette made a wet slurping sound, rearing, shuddering, obviously preparing for an all-out attack. Mercury performed a desperate, awkward backward tumble. Well, where did he aim at?

He vomited a mighty arch of these glistening worms, missing her wide. She was smug at first, he was proving her theory by shooting right at her former position. Then she noticed with rising alarm that he wasn't letting go! The stream crashed against the wall in front of her, far to the left, and rebounded unnaturally right across the street, splashing far and wide! There were enough worms to cover the entire street from side to side for a hundred meters. Granted, it was sparse coverage, unlike the meter-thick layer around the enemy. But Mercury was well aware of its sensory purpose. The worms were writhing, making the prospect of tip-toeing through them unfeasible. She was truly surrounded now, on a small island of clean pavement, unless she went for the rooftops: there were no gaps between buildings here. And trying to go through would be suicidal, there'd be enough dead ends and locked doors sturdy enough to resist even her superhuman strength to spell her doom.

And he was still not letting go!

She began sneaking towards the wall behind her when the demon suddenly turned sharply changing his aim at the wall she was going to use as her escape route!

Mercury stilled, staggering from the chilling fright when scarce worms from the stream re-aimed, to her luck, sharply enough to lose cohesion for a moment, started raining right around her. She felt her hair standing on its ends, her breath catching, when one wrapped around her calf, felt so distinctly like there was no boot there.

The end...?

To her immense relief, the worm uncoiled itself and crawled away as the demon finally stopped vomiting. There was probably a limit to how much he could sense with lots of worms still splashing against the wall and falling down. Yet another weakness to note. But she was truly surrounded now, the tiny spot of relatively clear street around her shrinking rapidly as the worms were crawling chaotically.

Mercury made a desperate vertical jump, grabbing an advertising board attached to a nearby lamppost. Moments later the writhing mass closed the gap five meters below her feet.

Brutally suppressing a sigh of relief she noticed that her left foot was bare. The boot was gone below the spot where that worm touched her. The edge of the remaining part was emitting blue smoke, flickering and warping a most unnatural way, which told of her magic being distorted in some strange way. Now this?！

"Where did she go?" the demon mumbled, thankfully distracted from the hostages by now. "To the roofs?" He let fly a short vomit burst splashing the top floors and presumably the roofs. "Nothing. Still, this fog spell thingy holds. Should I hasten her return?"

Mercury decided with frustration against pulling her computer out and trying to scan the anomaly. She was chastising herself for not setting up a silent mode hot key. One accidental beep, and she would be done for. Or would even the key tapping sound be enough? The Senshi was painfully aware of her vulnerable position: her arms weren't strong enough to jump up onto the streetlamp. It was too risky to jump away by pushing with her feet off the lamppost, she wasn't _that_ ·agile. And below, there was writhing and wet sounds, some tendrils already slithering up the lamppost.

The demon, meanwhile, reached with one of his octopus tentacles and picked up one of his hostages, a middle-aged balding salary man. "It seems your so called protector have fled," he told the man mockingly. "Time to say Aaaaaah."

Then, to Mercury's shock, he started tearing the man's clothing off. She blushed briefly before a horrible realization hit her: he was going to die! The man realized that as well, kicking and screaming ill thought out threats about his connections in the police or something, his voice shrill from fear.

Mercury watched helplessly as the enemy opened his maw wide, wider, even wider still, dangling the nude man over this yawning orifice that could fit a van inside.

"Down the hatch," the demon gurgled, as he released his victim. He snapped his mouth shut cutting the terrified scream short. He gulped loudly. A barely visible lump rolled down the upraised part of his snail body, and that was it.

Just like that.

Then he picked up his last prey, a young woman with shoulder-length black hair, and began tearing off her business suit. Having not seen but heard what happened to the previous victim, she was whimpering in terror.

Mercury felt like screaming in frustration, she was racking her brain for a plan but finding none. The only chance to get away and fight him from effective distance was to let go and land on top of the writhing mass, betting everything on her ability to leap away before the worms react. It was the only chance both for her and for the remaining... hostage. If she was quick enough, she'd leap away and be able to do something. But if not... Slowly, carefully Mercury turned her head, afraid that the board would creak under her fingers. But her luck was still holding. She swept the street with her eyes, trying to memorize every detail. She would have to let go carefully, to avoid even a tiniest noise. So she would have to drop positioned as she was, turning around in mid-air was out. She would have to turn around during her first jump. She had to land on the roof of one of cars rising like islands from the sea of worms. Mercury tried to calculate that jump, already aware it was futile due to unknown tensile factor of the worms, but still stalling impotently.

The woman was nude now. The demon was eyeing her critically, holding her with one tentacle around her midsection, turning her this way and that.

"Please, please," she pleaded fearfully, her hands clutching at the tentacle. "I'll do anything! Anything, just don't swallow me, please..." She sobbed.

"Anything...?" He paused for a second, frowning in confusion. "Oh, _that_. Not interested," he retorted indifferently. Then he started ranting again: "Why do people keep thinking I'm some sort of porn fetish?" He was gesticulating with the tentacle holding the crying woman, not even noticing he was whipping her around roughly. "Just because I _don't_ ·have a stupid habit of eating my food with wrapping still on? Bah. I'm not human anymore. I'm much more! I don't care about your stupid rutting thing. I just," He held his prey still, right in front of his face, "don't like the taste of clothing. Besides," He licked his lips making the woman tremble in terror, "all these modern fabrics have lots of plastics in them. They just sit there, building up. I don't fancy hacking up nylon balls like some cat. Well, down you go!" He opened his maw wide, a glistening tongue stretching forward. The woman whimpered. He closed his mouth again, paused for a second, then added: "Just so you know: I do not chew. Why, ask me? But of course to let my food go out with appropriate slowness, fully accustomed with my stomach acid and flesh-dissolving enzymes!" Then he began slowly, oh so slowly, opening his mouth again.

Mercury couldn't remember when she had let go. But she was already floating down, falling so slowly like she was drowning in molasses. Her heartbeat was as glacial. A slow beat, a long, long pause... Another beat... My consciousness sped up, she thought. My body had activated its emergency survival mode... With fear of the things below being the starting factor. She tried to rein in the slowly rising fear, it was still manageable, not threatening her self-control yet but already interfering with her perception, preventing her from analyzing the situation logically. Come on, you're an experienced warrior, you have seen things that would make lesser people's hair turn gray!

The attempt to discipline herself failed miserably. This fear was primal, irrational. A fear of a herbivore before its natural predator. The mass of worms below was more terrifying than a yawning abyss.

Mercury clenched her teeth trying to ride the wave of fear. To make it work for her, to direct it towards the set goal. Her feet touched, at last, the soft mass and she began crouching down, pushing against the unyielding press of gravitation, bleeding off the inertia, trying to put all her strength, all the adrenaline into the muscles of her legs. Time slowed down to a crawl. The worms were beginning to twist, tensing and buckling against her bare feet. And still the inertia continued to press her, bending lower and lower, pressing her deeper into the soft, yielding mass.

She met the eyes of the captive who turned away from the demon, unable to look at the opening maw. The woman couldn't see through the fog, couldn't know that the help was so close and yet so far away. There was despair of a life cut short in her eyes. It was hard to tell if she was pretty with her face scrunched up like that, but she had well cared for hair and toned body, and probably worked hard studying and training to realize the bright future that was waiting for her, as her mother worked before that raising her.

And all of that was going to become nutrients for some eldritch abomination wannabe.

Mercury felt holy anger rising in her heart, burning the fear. The unruly emotions tangled in a fierce dogfight, threatening to overwhelm her conscious mind, overwhelm and sweep in away in a blood-red wave. You'll pay for everything, she promised to the demon silently, burning him with her glare. Just you wait until I move to the distance where _I_ ·will control the flow of battle!

The maw was opening wider. The worms under her bare feet were buckling stronger. She almost growled pushing all her impotent fury into her legs tensed to the limit.

The feeling of the skirt touching her thighs returned Mercury to her senses, making her realize that she was already straightening, for who knows how long. All this time, it wasn't the gravitation she was pushing against. It was inertia.

This is not how I fight, Mercury slapped herself mentally. To rush forward on the wave of emotions, it's for the others. The devil-may-care charge of Uranus, the thundering anger of Jupiter and Iris, the scorching self-confidence of Sol, the overwhelmingly pure love of Moon... That's not my way. _My_ ·weapon is my mind!

She hastily tried to re-assess the situation. The first thing she noticed was that her jump would carry her more up than backwards. It came out completely different from what she had calculated, completely breaking her plan. 'Well, I'll have to improvise using what I have.' The jump would carry her towards the middle of the street, away from any car islets. It was too late to try and correct its direction, she had no chance to turn around either. She tried assessing her future landing spot. Nothing too reassuring, but...

And the time rushed forth at its normal speed.

Mercury's body uncoiled like a steel spring catapulting her skyward. The worms all over the street went into a frenzy, lashing at the air. The demon was alert, preparing to vomit blindly, but she didn't have time to worry about that. She was almost at the apex of her arc, an advertising banner passing by, and she had to reach it, to grab, and she twisted squirming desperately, and clutched it almost skinning her fingers, feeling like she pulled a ligament due to the awkward angle...

Mercury rotated around the banner like a gymnast on a bar. Her fingers slipped in the end, but she still transformed her remaining horizontal momentum into vertical one. And only then, tumbling slowly further upward, she noticed that the banner was at the _fifth-story level_!

For a fraction of a second all she felt was amazement at the the incredible height she managed to reach thanks to the explosive mix of adrenaline and willpower. But she was already losing momentum reaching the apex of the new arc while the demon was just beginning to vomit. He was aiming low, along the ground, losing her completely. The forgotten victim was being waved around in his left tentacle, still uneaten.

Her position was perfect, much better that her initial plan of desperate leaping across the cars would have allowed. She'd be caught by now, the demon was rapidly improving his tactics. The worms have already engulfed all cars in pulsating cocoons.

Alas for him, she was now high above the street, above the billowing fog, while the enemy was wide open and unaware. Mercury, meanwhile, had more than one and a half seconds on her disposal &mdash an incredible luxury in combat.

Concentrating, Mercury summoned her powers. A mighty stream of icy, crystal clear water surged forth obeying her will, gaining momentum, ready to rush into the physical reality. It as always felt like playing a harp.

"Mercury..."

She was falling now, noting absently the the demon cussing, hearing her shout, but she had her attention completely occupied by the cocoon of water jets whirling around her. She had to shape it, give it goal and order, direct and adjust it, to achieve precisely the outcome she planned.

"..Aqua..."

A whole second passed until she managed to give the malleable spell the form she needed. And almost half a second more to check and recheck everything, to achieve perfection.

"..Rhapsody!"

Only when she almost reached the ground, already piercing the dispersing layer of fog, Mercury's form exploded with jets of water, innumerable for an outside observer, known precisely by her to the tiniest rivulet.

The snaking jets slammed into the pavement, merging into a single flow that covered the entire street, splashed at the surrounding walls... and froze instantly, turning the street into a perfect skating rink with still forms of the worms in its depth. A wall splashed up reflecting the vomited stream of worms ito the demon's face. At a small angle, slightly to the left off-center. Just as planned, he cringed back, choking, and waved the tentacle with his prey forward in the process. That appendage was immediately encased in a large chunk of ice around mid-length. Luckily, this plan worked too and the demon released its victim. Yet another miracle was that the woman managed to more or less right herself while falling from five meters up onto the ice. It seems she didn't even break anything.

A fraction of a second later, came the reckoning. Putting all her time reserves into the spell, with nothing to spare, Mercury had no time to reorient herself, to land properly. She slammed onto the ice with a jarring force, falling on her back from the fifth-story height.

Stunned, she slid helplessly along the ice. Luckily, it was away from the enemy. Then she hit something soft, like an empty cardboard box. The side of a car frozen solid onto the street was no match to her head, having suffered an impressive dent.

Mercury slumped, relaxing. She lay on her back for many blissful seconds looking into the blue sky while the demon was going through his impressive collection of dirtiest cussing words as he tried to free his encased tentacle.

The nude woman limped up to her, one hand holding her broken nose to staunch the flow of blood. "Are you all right?" she asked with concern, her voice nasal. Other than that and a bruised knee, there were only sucker marks around her midriff. "Thank you so much!" She made to help Mercury up.

"Don't worry, I'm fine!" The Senshi sat up with effort as she called her banished visor back to assess the damage. Pulled ligaments, abrasions, bruising, a light concussion, some trauma to her spinal discs, a brain hemorrhage... Nothing dangerous or even impeding her battle-worthiness seriously, a few minutes of good rest should restore her completely. She felt again thar nagging, recurring doubt if she was still a human. She waved it aside.

Mercury began climbing to her feet and the woman helped steady her. Knowing intellectually that damage is not critical and feeling it are quite different things. "Get on," Mercury wheezed out, leaning town slightly at the waist. "I'll carry you to safety."

"But you are battered!" the woman objected with concern.

"A battered superhuman," Mercury corrected her. "Your equivalent weight would be just a few kilograms to me. And we may be still in his range. Hurry!"

That convinced her. The woman climbed onto Mercury's back and the Senshi began limping at a brisk pace away from the enemy, reserving jogging or leaping to if there was immediate danger. The demon was a couple hundred meters behind now, much farther than he _probably_ ·could vomit. There was still ice with worms buried in it, if both much thinner - a testament to how far they could propagate on their own and how large an area she had to cover. She felt pride. The street was like that in other direction as well, frozen around and behind the demon up to the very wrecked bus. Thankfully, all children were saved before the worm flood began reached there.

"I'm Nakahara Yuki," the rescued woman offered, holding her nose with one hand to not bleed on her rescuer too much. "I'm... I'm... Thank you!" She shuddered, her sob more a squelch of coagulating blood. As they left the demon behind, the intense focus of survival was leaving her, a traumatized civilian remaining. "If... Just thank you!"

"I'm glad I did save you," the battered Senshi replied with a smile. "Sailor Mercury at your service." There were policemen rushing towards them now, braving the magical worms-containing ice. "It's over now. The others will be here soon and—"

"FOOD SHALL KNOW ITS PLACE‼！" the demon roared thunderously, rearing up, towering ominously, his angry visage at the third story height. "BEHAVE!" He began pulling back, back and back, his body swelling and pulsing with a mother of all powerful attacks.

"Run!" Mercury screamed trying to gain speed.

The demon VOMITED, a steaming stream leaving his mouth to cover two hundred meters separating them all too quickly. Mercury expected to be crushed, smeared across the ground by the descending high-velocity mass, but it exploded at the roof levels showering everything in hot slime. It wasn't acid as Mercury feared for one horrified moment, just a steaming hot stinky slime.

A hot slime that began dissolving her uniform in wisps and whorls of tortured magic, finishing its work in two seconds flat! The magical ice under their feet fared no better. Mercury kept running, hurting her bare feet on its jagged, crumbling surface, straining against the profound wrongness of distorted magic, her sailor crystal still stubbornly hovering in front of her bare chest even after the rest of her uniform was gone.

Then it gave out, dispersing in flakes of blue light, and a nude Ami collapsed into the mass of thawing worms unable to bear the weight of Yuki on her back as the damage caught up with her, debilitating and excruciating now, without the magic dulling the pain.

Then the worms began twisting her bruised, hurting body into a knot. She saw white and knew no more.

(シーンブレイク)

2009 — Januray 31, 2016.

 **Ding!** Tropes unlocked:  
I'm a Humanitarian  
Evil Is Visceral  
Eaten Alive

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— OSMQEP  
— Orphus users (73 bugs so far)


	3. Pluto's Last Stand

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled v1.5**

 **Chapter 3,  
Pluto's Last Stand.**

 _(half an hour ago)_

Pluto frowned as she re-tuned the space-time Door for the uncounted time. She didn't have a slightest idea what she was searching for. She didn't have a clue what made her wake up so early and go to comb the time stream time and again. Everything was eerily calm, but she couldn't get rid of a very bad feeling. This felt too much like a calm before the storm. Too serene a calm for it to be an ordinary storm.

After all, there was no other planet where the Life thrived so strongly. There was no other planet that attracted from the dark abyss of space things that man was not meant to know.

The brighter the light, the deeper the shadow.

It all began in times forgotten, at the dawn of the Universe, when first seeds of Life were born of the Primordial Chaos. Being ephemeral self-contradictory irregularities in the flow of entropy, they fed on the very thing that should have dispelled them eroding them and washing away. And yet, the newborn Life had the gall to hold on, building in complexity, using the very flow to move against it like a sailboat tacking upwind.

The Chaos would have swept it away eventually, if not for the amazing transformation some of the ephemeral constructs underwent. Winding tighter and tighter under the pressure of entropy, these gained the hardiness of a diamond. And so the Star Seeds were born, heralding an eventual coming of the Sailor Age. Splitting the flow of Chaos, the Seeds allowed their lesser brethren to procreate and grow strong under their veil. Not having anything bigger than a bacteria to represent them, the Seeds manifested at first as supernatural anomalies. Sometimes it was an unexplainable fluctuation generating a bubble of cosmos with different properties allowing the Life to emerge and prosper. Sometimes it was an anomalous planet keeping, despite all odds, a circular orbit and reflecting even the strongest radiation with its mighty magnetic field. Sometimes it was an exceptionally successful mutation allowing the evolution to make a whole quantum leap forward...

In essence it was the magic in its pure, undiluted form. The will to live, even unconscious yet, clashing against the unyielding laws of nature... And making them yield.

When the age of sapient life came, the Star Seeds gained, at last, bodily avatars among the races evolving under their protection. Demigods, bare-handed heroes able to beat the monsters of Chaos who threatened their planets, they soon found their ability to travel across the galaxy faster than light, thus creating a loose but still united network of civilizations. Just a millennium later, a first step towards the inescapable failure was made: establishing the institution of Sailor Warriors that replaced the blind destiny with a conscious choice. The flow of fate had been changed forever, the demigod protectors weren't born naturally anymore but were instead chosen among the heroes deserving to accept the power of a planetary crystal into their soul. Serenity the Silver of Terra, one of the first and most powerful of them, foresaw the possible consequences of such liberties. But neither she, nor any other had it in themselves to step down. To stop doing what they were doing. For each step towards the light ended so much pain, pulled their charges out of such a pit of suffering, that no human being would bring themselves to make a single step backwards. So they continued pushing the Chaos further and further away from their home worlds, building its resistance to intolerable levels. To walk this way and not see where it would eventually lead, one had to be blind. To turn back, one had to not be a human.

In the end, the Chaos took its revenge rolling across the Galaxy in a tremendous wave of destruction. The kingdoms of light fell, Serenity's Silver Millennium sharing their fate. The Dark Age came. Thrown back into the stone age, the sapient races — the few that survived — began their long, painful climb back to the stars.

As time passed, many Star Seeds found new avatars or reincarnated their old ones. The age of Sailor Warriors was tentatively returning into the Galaxy, the avatars standing against the chaos-spawn again, waging the battle that cannot be won, that can just be fought. Because they were fighting against the very cosmos, with their teeth and nails taking from it the right to live for themselves and their loved ones.

The most striking, selfless and stupid was the heroic deed of Sailor Galaxia, the strongest of the Sailor Senshi. By attempting to seal the chaos of the entire galaxy inside herself, by trying to defeat that which cannot be defeated, she gave thousands of sapient races a chance to bloom unhindered, in peace and safety... Only to scythe them down by her own hand when the chaos finally won, subverting her from inside.

Only the perseverance of Sailor Sol and the all-encompassing kindness of Sailor Moon made it possible to stop the destruction on the last edge, preventing Galaxia from destroying Earth, the last living planet left in the galaxy. What they experienced that day left its traces - no defender of the Solar system was left unchanged.

Pluto hoped against reason that she didn't disturb the Cosmic Balance when she broke all taboos saving billions of lives. Time and again she felt the pain of a doubt. Should she have trusted the Princess and waited until she performed a miracle...? But no. Their future Queen wasn't ready yet. She didn't yet have that limitless power which could be glimpsed in neo-Serenity. The Usagi of today... She felt incomplete. Even in her highest form, achieved by a miracle, Eternal Sailor Moon was no match for Galaxia. Only the desperate efforts of Sol, who delayed and distracted the mighty adversary, allowed Moon to get close... And cleanse the tortured Senshi of the chaos possessing her.

Galaxia was long and irrevocably dead, having turned to dust with a grateful smile when Sailor Moon purified her. And yet, the doubt remained. Pluto had a feeling that everything should have turned differently. That they all should have died and Serenity should've won alone by ascending to her next, ultimate form. But the vague doubts are one thing and the billions of lives lost are on a completely different scale. There was no saving them except turning the time back. It wasn't fitting for Princess Serenity to be crowned a queen of a planet that was one big graveyard.

The Cosmic Balance... The cold and unforgiving fundamental force which keeps the universe from destroying itself, known by man as a set of conservation laws. Of energy, of entropy, of momentum... But alas, the conservation law Pluto unknowingly disturbed wasn't of such mundane things but of matters hopelessly beyond even her comprehension, belonging to such powerful yet intangible things as fate and destiny. And the destiny of the entire world was rapidly approaching the breaking point.

Right now, the future was smooth like a mirror. Not the slightest ripple, not a trace of outside influence.

And yet, her intuition practically screamed danger. Her thousands years of experience tried to tell her something. If she just could place what it was.

(シーンブレイク)

Unseen by Pluto, unknown for her, undetectable by means known to science nor magic, a titanic bulk of frozen time rested in the depths of the unexplored dimensions. The last monument of a civilization foolish enough to play with time, to treat it as a mere technology, as a cheap material for their dreams. That civilization was no more. It never existed, erased from the time stream by their own creation obediently executing an erroneous command. Yet the creation itself persisted, still following the last instructions it never received from nobody. Exist. Expand. Stabilize the world. Protect from meddling in the past. And the incredible machine, woven itself of threads of fate, kept striving against all odds with a mechanical stubbornness — unaware that its existence was impossible, not caring that its goal was unreachable. That simply wasn't in its program. And it survived, absorbing in the process all the time and space it could reach, assimilating a multitude of habitable worlds. It wasn't evil. It wasn't aggressive. It wasn't even self-aware. It was a very simple and robust machine following a very simple program.

A machine that many beings were able to hack into and use the power of to their advantage. Unless they were foolish enough to try to seize control over it all. Even the memory of those fools was then erased from the pages of time by a guardian paradox circuit. For the core of this machine had a truly absolute protection: everyone who would be able to hack it were erased before they were even born.

It's not surprising then that most of its "users", the beings who were able to control a fraction of the machine's energy, were either dumb or narrow-minded. Or both. For they were in fact mere pawns used by the machine on the way to its pre-programmed goals. Alas, that didn't prevent these creatures from being clever and wily.

One such being used a nasty trick to fish for its living prey outside, among the living universes, snatching it through the chinks of reality where multiverses with vastly different laws conflicted touching each other. And now this petty and foolish freak waited in gleeful anticipation, having set the hulk it didn't even comprehend on a collision course with one more external universe.

A universe that, unlike all the previous ones, had such an element as Sailor Senshi, mighty braces on the chaos-soaked fabric of cosmos. No one would be able to predict the result of such a collision.

(シーンブレイク)

Pluto adjusted the view port matrix one more time, looking at the multi-dimensional weave of the universe from yet another perspective. Still nothing, only the usual slow waves of background noises. Oh, if just things were so simple as most people think: look into the future, see the threat, take counter-measures.

In practice... In practice, the Universe is an unimaginably tangled weave made of the individual threads of fate of every thing alive. Like an infinite web, like a multi-dimensional field of moss, living, breathing, changing. Just look too closely, and it's so easy to lose yourself in the details, to stray away from the goal of your search. The individuals threads of fate are always in chaotic motion, somehow similar to the Brownian motion of the water molecules: these dash around frantically while the great river consisting of them flows slowly but surely.

There are exceptions in this weave, most notable of which is the shining silver thread of Princess Serenity, then Usagi, then neo-Queen Serenity. Thin just like the others, yet carrying an incredible power, like a million volt power line connecting the distant past with the foggy future. In fact, the entire web of fates of this planet is hanging on it.

Pluto switched the mode again, now looking at the time stream in its physical guise. This slightly rippling surface was like the surface of a river flowing from the past to the future. One could see the recently traversed rapids behind and the even, clear way ahead.

A deceptive, dangerously lulling picture. For the number of dimensions is almost infinite — not the worlds in the subtopian understanding, but dimensions: the lines in the world space _perpendicular to every other one._ ·Nobody knows how the world changes along most of these if you stray from our zero coordinate. Because the visible world, and the world known to Pluto, of which it is just a small part, is in itself just an infinitely, infinitely, infinitely small part of the Whole.

Still, what was it that felt so wrong?

Pluto peered so intently into the time stream that she lost herself in the infinite details that would put any fractal to shame, overlooking the very thing she was searching for. There was a great wave rising right around her, but she missed it like a ship in the open sea doesn't notice a tsunami it passes over. All because of the immense size of the almost flat hill on the water.

The river of time of their living world met an unplanned obstacle. It being far below the surface yet, the time flowed around it resiliently, forming just the slightest eddies.

(シーンブレイク)

 **(External connection requested. Authenticating...  
Success. User Ahs-Asthat-Taheet, access level 3.  
Establishing connection...)**

 _A slightest miscalculation cost Happousai dearly. Ukyou's battle spatula smacked him with a resounding clang. Thrown right at the feet of the oncoming horde of angry girls, he was..._ ·

 **(Syncing time streams... Success, cutoff threshold 800 Petawatts.  
Connection established, temporal corrections quota 150 Petawatts.  
Current load 3 Watts.)**

 _Deftly dodging Ukyou's battle spatula, Happousai leaped for the rooftops ditching the horde of angry girls: too much of a good thing would be good for nothing. Once he lost his pursuers, the old pervert started bounding towards the Tendous..._ ·

Pluto frowned noticing the increasing disturbances in the time stream. Their origin remained unclear but such 'insignificant' fluctuations posed an immense risk. More disturbing was the fact that she never, in all the thousand years of her watch, had seen anything like this. Not knowing how to react she activated the soft counter-measures. Some mechanisms inside the Door came online after thousands years of inactivity, changing the second derivatives of the thin attributes of time, increasing its viscosity. While the principles behind this process were complex enough to blow the minds of mere mortals, it was in essence an equivalent to the sailors of the past centuries pouring oil into the raging sea to calm the waves. Alas, with a similarly negligible effect.

 _Once he lost his pursuers, the old pervert thought of returning to the Tendous, but the weather was nice, so he decided for a little walk. Down on the street he met a merchant selling gold fishes..._ ·

 **(Warning, temporal interference!  
Increasing uplink power to one Megawatt.)**

 _...he met a merchant selling various esoteric incenses. The old man got interested: he had an ungrateful pupil to punish, after all. The man in fedora had a suitable incense in his stock, so Happousai headed home holding a..._ ·

Pluto have grasped, at last, the nature and scale of the incoming disaster. Having her hair not turning gray only thanks to the Senshi protective magic, her eyes wide in horror, she looked forward like a captain of a ship going full speed toward a reef that was noticed just a moment ago... When it's absolutely too late to try to avoid collision.

No, the river of time still flowed quietly. But these abnormal side currents, the increasing number of eddies ahead... There, under the surface, was coming something immense.

And she still didn't have a slightest idea what it was.

Of course Pluto didn't just stay put. She frantically switched the Door from view port to view port, but in all planes, in all slices of the continuum, no matter which plane she chose as the observable "surface", the picture stayed the same.

Whatever was coming, it was coming from beyond the known world, along one of the multitude of unexplored perpendiculars.

Throwing caution to the wind, Pluto activated the Door's emergency protocol. Artificial threads snaked into the past and the future, latching onto the living fabric, breaking someone's fates... But she had no time for sentiments now. The shining silver thread sang, straining more and more. If it snapped, everything would be done for. Without it, the life on Earth would have no chance of survival. After all, the interstellar abyss is not lifeless. From the beginning of Time it's been inhabited by the hungry spawn of Primordial Chaos.

 _...so Happousai headed home holding the golden medallion. The old hag who sold it to him looked a bit suspicious, but... Well, the artifact was surely worth a little risk. Just to think of it: to be able to steal bras from distance, right from their owners! A dream of every man, that's sure. The icing on the cake was the fact that he bought it dirt cheap. After all, you need to be a ki master to use it... Happousai cackled. He was a ki master, all right._ ·

 _Returning home, the old pervert didn't even waste time sorting his haul. Pulling out the medallion..._ ·

 **(Warning! Temporal interference increases!  
Increasing uplink power to 80 Gigawatts.)**

 _...the old pervert didn't even waste time sorting his haul. Pulling out the Beherit he found lying on the street..._ ·

Pluto shuddered stumbling back from the Door. Ahead, a huge monolith tore through the mirror of time stream and loomed, smoking. A jagged, immovable iceberg of frozen time that moved but _did not flow_. The keeper of the time-space Door felt sick to the bone: this thing was so _wrong_ , so unnatural, so impossible...

The time stream around the iceberg started freezing, the weave hardening, the threads of fate tearing, re-connecting, tearing again in a nerve-wracking cacophony. The shining silver thread emitted a blood-curdling whine catching on the jagged, unyielding edges. Any more, and it would snap. And that would be the end.

Failing to suppress a cry of terror, Pluto made a reckless decision. Sol and Saturn weren't the only ones who had an ultimate attack in their sleeve. Oh no, the Senshi of Beyond had her own repertoire of spells allowing her to put all her power into one suicidal, _final_ ·technique.

"DARK.."

Hurricane winds swirled around the raised staff howling like hordes of wraiths rushing to obey their patron, her mane of dark green hair flapping in the wind like a flame.

"ORB..."

A mighty orb of darkness started coalescing at the tip of the staff. The recoil from this spell was going to be terrible, much worse than that time over the Mugen academy. But only one thing mattered for Pluto now: the silver thread strained to its last limit chafing against the razor-sharp edges with a dying sing. How she would return from wherever the recoil would catapult her, she would think of later. If she survived.

"ENTOMB‼！"

Stepping through the Door, the Senshi of time superimposed her three-dimensional mortal shell onto the cosmic weave in such way that the required dimension, the tip of the iceberg became a forward vector for her. And in that last moment, releasing the blast that took all her power, she could at last see clearly _what_ ·was opposing her — and she knew despair.

The mighty orb of dark energy crashed into the tip of the iceberg. The foreign anomaly rang under the force of the blow... It gave way, submerging a bit...

 _...Pulling the golden egg out of the dusty chest where it had rested for at least a century, Happousai gazed at the..._ ·

 **(Alarm! Connection destabilizes!  
Deactivating the uplink power limiters!)**

Failing to achieve the impossible, the dark orb dispersed in brilliant motes of black light. And the iceberg surged up, tearing the future asunder, looming like a titanic wall, freezing the time to the very horizon of the observed universe. Swatting away someone utterly insignificant in the process.

It wasn't just a chunk of frozen time, nor it was a construct of some evil genius. It was the edge of a whole multiverse frozen billion years deep and wide, having practically infinite mass and energy.

The past of the whole universe has been frozen solid, making the time travel fundamentally impossible. The future disappeared in a fog of uncertainty. Such thing as fate ceased to be. The prophecies lost their meaning. The fated people lost the power guiding them.

Only the shining silver thread persisted by some miracle, emerging from the ice and right away disappearing in the fog. It didn't hold the life of the human kin anymore. It wasn't necessary for the continued existence of the world anymore. And yet, it continued to shine stubbornly.

 _...Pulling the Beherit out of the dusty chest where it had rested for at least a century, Happousai gazed at the strange thing. The protrusions in the form of facial features randomly scattered across the surface of the egg-shaped pendant started moving until they formed a face. The Beherit opened its eyes and the abyss gazed back at the old pervert._ ·

 **(Connection stabilized, current load 182 Petawatts.  
Warning: Level 3 user Ahs-Asthat-Taheet, you have exceeded your quota by 32 Petawatts. Your quota will be decreased to 100 Petawatts for the next 100 years.)**

(シーンブレイク)

Happousai backed away from the suddenly activating artifact. The Beherit opened its mouth, emitting a scream surprisingly low and powerful for such a small thing. A moment later the artifact exploded with slime, swelling with a splorch into a mass of what looked like a slimy pile of giant intestines, pulsing, crawling and flowing along the walls and ceiling. An ugly face formed on a particularly thick one.

"Hello there," the eldritch abomination gurgled, smiling.

"W..WHAT...?！" Shocked, Happousai stumbled back. He, of course, expected a seductive demoness in a self-replenishing lingerie. "This... This is wrong!" He lost his balance and fell, overcome with the unimaginable stench making his eyes water. "Be... koff... Begone, hell-pawn!" he tried weakly to wave the stench away. Then, louder: "Noooo! What have you... **koff** What have you done, you defiler! My silky darlings..."

Alas, it was too late. The room was barely big enough to fit the thing in, it has already overturned everything around, matting most of the grandpa's collection with its slime.

"You... You will pay!" Happousai cried out, offended to the depth of his soul. "Happou Dai Karin!"

The demon smirked at the tiny firecracker.

He gathered his brains back together, regenerating the damage in an instant. Now he looked at Happousai differently. Not with contempt, but with interest. A very unhealthy interest. Then he drawled: "You're strong, that I admit. You could even survive." His smile made the old pervert feel ice crawling along his spine. "Well, my unwilling accomplice, let's have a little fun then..."

"NOOOO!" was the only objection Happousai had time to vocalize, glued to the floor by the slime under his feet suddenly turning semi-solid

"Well-well, what do we have here?" The demon smiled at him.

"Begone!" Happousai was thrashing helplessly in a semi-transparent bubble of twisted energies that were invading his mind. "No...!" He cried seeing the depths of the rotten soul going to absorb him. "Begone...! Don't... **koff** don't you dare, you... You, _abomination_!" For the first time real, honest tears wet the old pervert's wrinkled features. "Yes, I... I allowed myself a little too much...! Just innocent distractions of an old man...! But I... NO! You, abomination! Don't you dare touching..." He struggled mightily for the last time. "Come on, break my neck now, for I'll never concede, I will... fight... stop you..." He fell silent, his strength completely drained. "What... waiting for... kill...me..."

The demon just grinned in reply. This new toy was so amusing! It was thinking that "even evil has standards". Hilarious, simply hilarious.

(シーンブレイク)

When the other inhabitants of the house found their courage to peek into his room they, to their sheer luck, didn't find anybody — just a total wreckage covered with a nauseatingly stinky slime.

"I'm not letting her try to clean there," Nabiki said while tending to Kasumi, who had tried valiantly to do exactly that but just fainted. "Father, you'd better call a decontamination team."

(シーンブレイク)

From inside the time stream, from the corner of the Prime material plane called Earth, the wave of radical changes washing over the universe was practically unnoticeable. Like the passengers of a train are usually unaware about tracks switching far ahead or a stray godzilla crushing the return path behind, most people didn't feel anything unusual. Even the Senshi stayed blissfully unaware until the emergency all-call signal interrupted their daily activities.

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— Climhazard  
— N. Kuta  
— Orphus users (7 bugs so far)


	4. It's not even my Final Form!

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled v1.5**

 **Chapter 4,  
It's not even my Final Form!**

(シーンブレイク)

 _(the present)_

It was like swimming up from the depths of prickly numbing darkness to surface into merciless light suffused with pain. Pain of all sorts and nausea and throbbing, cotton-filled head. Sluggishly, Ami remembered she was dying from brain hemorrhage. She couldn't even feel the irony that she won't probably live long enough to finish that. The hated enemy kept blurring then swimming back into focus, looming over her, as jovial and nonchalant as ever. Squinting she recognized that he was finishing ripping the uniform off a policeman. Weren't there several more? She frowned trying to think and her head throbbed again.

In his second tentacle, he was holding a crying Yuki. I am so sorry, Nakahara Yuki, Ami thought, lucid enough to feel deep sadness. I failed you again. Was the monster saying something...? Was it to her...?

"..ly awoke!" his voice, wet and gurgly, cut through her headache. "A pity you won't last long, but at least I saved a treat just for you!" Dropping the now nude policeman he lifted Yuki up dangling her by her feet as he licked his lips. "Isn't this the girl you thought you saved? Isn't she someone you _sacrificed_ ·yourself to save?" He smiled widely. "Sadly, you already know pain. I don't think I can add much. Fear too, you are too far beyond that. But...!" He made a pointed pause, his creepy grin creeping wider. "Nobody said you can't know despair, know _failure_... Are you fading already? I'll be brief then. Take your last look at her." He swayed Yuki from side to side. "You did? Good. Now, thanks-for-the-meal!" He opened his maw wide, even wider, wider still as he dangled the woman above this yawning orifice. Then he began lowering her, slowly, to prolong suffering. But neither girl was reacting. All Ami could feel was sadness for a life lost. The victim herself was beyond despair, she was just waiting patiently for the end.

"Meh," the demon gurgled with open mouth. "Yo'r ma'be docile now, but wait until pain—"

"Sparkling Wide Pressure!" a new voice cut in.

Ami never have thought she could feel such a pure, overwhelming relief at the sound of Jupiter's voice.

Instead of a helpless victim, the demon swallowed a spinning thunderball that curved, guided by Jupiter's will, right into his widely open maw. There was a muffled explosion that lit his body from within and a corona of lightning spewing from his mouth. He gagged, Yuki landing safely in the soft mass of worms.

But he wasn't done. Not even close. He was reaching down for his two food items!

"Sparkling Wide Pressure!"

Ami never have thought she could feel such a pure, overwhelming terror at the sound of Jupiter's voice.

"No! Stop! He's—"

It took only a second for the spinning thunderball to cross the fifty meters separating Jupiter-on-the-roof from the demon.

The hostages were already in its path, used as a meat shield.

For an endless moment the world froze.

Only a tremendous effort of her will allowed Jupiter to halt her projectile, redirecting it into the ground.

"Stop risking," Ami moaned, unsure if she could be heard. "This enemy isn't just strong, he is extremely smart, and he is... learning quickly. You cannot defeat... him by charging blindly."

Still, the cavalry was here.

Invigorated now, determination beginning to burn through pain, she tried to take a look around. She couldn't. Finally aware of her own position, the girl genius found herself chained to the pavement, spread-eagled, with worms practically cocooning her extremities. Some were holding her head semi-upraised, clutching at her hair. It should have hurt, but compared to previous trauma it was nothing.

So all she could see was the ugly visage of the demon close up, taking a good half of her vision. And she was still dying. And could do nothing to even warn her comrades. And naked in the middle of a street, some small part of her was bemoaning in embarrassment, with all the prominence of a buzzing gnat.

"Oh, more courses arrive!" the demon noted with approval. "I wonder, who of you would be—"

"Crescent Beam!"

A pencil-thick beam ow yellow light speared him through his right eye... With an unexpected result of that eye lighting up like a yellow floodlight for a few seconds. Then it died down leaving no mark.

"Oooh, pretty lights!" the demon appreciated. "I swear I saw the inside of my own eyeball for a moment here!"

"He.. hehh... is magic-resistant!" Ami found strength to raise her voice a bit.

"Please be silent," the demon chastised her as a worm forced itself into her mouth. "You wouldn't want to spoil the surprise, wouldn't you?"

She wasn't about to give up, biting down hard. The demon either didn't notice or didn't care. The worm burst, proving to really be an intestine-like envelope filled with... Choking on a perfectly disgusting, mind-wrenchingly vile chunky goo, Ami wished she'd drown in sewage instead. That would be vastly preferable. The worm began writhing and thrashing, splattering the viscous mass up her nostrils. What a sad way to go, the suffocating Ami thought as her vision began to dim.

"..ve-me Chain!" cut through the encroaching darkness as something slashed nearby, and she felt being turned face down by strong arms supporting her...

Oh no, Ami thought in panic, the vomit weapon! They were right next to his face! She desperately shouted a warning: "Beaargh blaaa khe ooblarg!"

"That was a nice try," the demon commented with sarcasm, "But I don't even need—" There was a shout of "Sparkling Wide Pressure" and the sound of another thunderball discharging. "Owie, don't even need that. Look down, my orange-wrapped candy. What is it that you are standing in?"

"What?" Venus glanced down finding herself barefoot on a flat pile of worms.

"Venus-chan!" the captive police officer squeaked in an otaku-ish fanboy voice, blushing and covering his privates with both hands.

"Thubuhh.. These dispel our uniforms," Ami wheezed out wondering why was the enemy playing with them so much to even allow them having this conversation in reach of _all_ ·his weapons, including the main pair of tentacles? She sat up turning halfway around to keep an eye on the demon. Oh, occupied with two hostages. Her head was swimming, thoughts sluggish. Condition: critical, she assessed using what she remembered of the prior self-scan. A bit beyond the modern age medicine by now. "If... hah... touch your sailor crystal... Run!"

"I won't leave you h—" Venus tried to protest but the worms reared up writhing furiously as they slithered up her shapely legs. "Yah!" She made several scissor-kick motions sending the creeps flying. Not even one got past mid-thigh. Only strong enough to restrain baseline humans, Ami noted diligently. "I won't—"

"He got a vomit attack!" Ami shouted making her vision swim and a sea urchin flare inside her skull. "Very... hah.. fast..."

"Ptui," the demon vocalized as he send a smallest stream of worms in Venus' direction. She leaped aside. "Ptui. Ptui. Ptui-ptui-ptui-ptui."

Finding herself under accurate barrage that anticipated her movements, Venus had to display true miracles of acrobatics with crazy leaps, cartwheels, handsprings and tarzaning on rapidly summoned, non-verbalized chains. But the demon wasn't letting her return to the rooftops. Exploiting the mutually annihilating natures of the worms and the chain he cut it time and again... Until with an angry "Fire Soul!" a steady stream of fire began making his tail end uncomfortable.

He twisted around sluggishly — well, he _was_ ·a slug now — to put hostages up front.

The fire cut off, the tail only smoking a bit, but with a contemptuous "Supreme Thunder" a stream of lighting began pouring onto him from the other side. The Senshi were nearing their prime now, past the horrors of Sailor Glaxia. They could throw these first level techniques all day without breaking a sweat.

The demon tried to hold hostages out to different sides. Each tentacle had a reach of five meters. He was twenty five long. Thus ping-ponging continued for a while until he curled up into a spiral, grumbling. They couldn't keep go—

There was merciful darkness full of promise of rest. Then,—

"..mi! Hey, Ami! Wake up!" Her vision focused slowly, darkness receding. "Don't you dare giving up on me, girl!" The shaking courtesy of Venus was agonizingly painful.

Still she found strength for a lopsided smile: "Nurse... Mina strikes again. ..ld you is... bad shaking someone dying from internal injuries...? Thank... you, ..lling me back here though." Exerting a Herculean effort, she summoned her henshin wand from subspace and turned from a critical civilian (during triage, mark black) into a winded sailor-suited warrior of Love and Justice.

"You scared me here!" Venus breathed out. "Tell me you weren't really dying, please!"

"Sorry but I was," Mercury replied trying to sit up but failing miserably. "It was a close call, I think I saw a glimpse of Shinigami."

"Mercury-chan..." Venus seemed shaken before she collected herself. "Don't do that again, all right?"

"I need you to carry me around," Mercury said clutching at her throbbing head. "Seeing as I'm still the kind they wheel straight to the morgue bypassing the emergency ward," she joked darkly.

"Are you sure—"

"Hurry. We're still in range. He can do arching shots that explode at will showering a wide area. If he does that with acid instead of just worms or the dispelling slime that got me..."

"Acid?" Venus asked with alarm as she helped the weakly struggling Mercury onto her back. "I saw the self-defense force on the move, we have to warn them!"

"I'll do that," Mercury gasped out. "You make sure we don't get— Ow." Being moved around was painful, she was feeling her entire magic reserves rushing to repair or vanish the damage. Detransforming before things heal was never a good thing. She summoned her visor and let out a sigh of relief seeing that hostages were still alive. Then there was an even more joyful event: a teleport energy signature of Sailor Sol.

Venus was on the move, prowling along the roof edges, ready to dodge. Mars and Jupiter were locked in a stalemate where they couldn't even risk taking potshots at the demon while he was lacking psychological leverage to trick them into doing something stupid, like jumping down to the street level. His threats of eating the hostages were always met with projectiles entering his maw with pinpoint accuracy. He was flinging back accusations of the girls being too spicy and ruining his exquisite taste. And so it continued in an endless circle. Poor Yuki, poor policeman.

But now Mercury had a more pressing concern. Opening a secure channel through the underground base of joint operations, a leftover from the Jadeite war, she called their liaison. It did not take him long to respond.

"Colonel Tanaka listening."

"Sailor Mercury here, with status report and tactical analysis," she replied and could swear she heard a faint "thank gods she's alive" over the line. "Be advised that the scattered worms are a sensory network and also count as a remote controlled trap. Even when they play docile the enemy can sense anyone touching them. The enemy's main weapon is corrosive spit. Perfect accuracy, correcting for opponent's motion. At distances up to approximately a hundred meters there is no firing delay. At distances of at least two hundred meters requires powering up for approximately one second. Can fire in projectile or in a sustained stream. Projectiles can be remotely detonated. I advice against using armored vehicles, the goo is strong enough to melt a car in two seconds, its engine block in five."

There were a few seconds of silence on the other end with clearly overheard "Gosh, how did she survive?"

"Please proceed," the aging veteran urged with concern.

"Enemy used a different one on us," Mercury explained anyway, mostly to relive tension. "So far we saw corrosive goo, worms and anti-magic slime. I strongly suspect it's what the worms are filled with... Oh, I'm sorry. The enemy is a strong and intelligent demon of a sadistic disposition, his goal is swallowing people alive after verbally torturing them. He is currently holding two hostages, a civilian and a police officer. Oh... Ugh, sorry, my thoughts are jumbled for the moment. Enemy defense is very strong. His current form is a hundred ton slug. Against physical damage, six nine millimeter bullets to the eye only caused complaints of attackers being impolite, not even scratch damage. Our normal magic only inconveniences him if we hit the inside of his mouth or in sustained bursts, but him using hostages as a shield negated that. We are currently holding the enemy up by harassing him from the roofs, waiting for Moon or Sol to arrive and, hopefully finish him off. Sol is already closing in! But be advised that he could plow through the city in any direction if he just had determination to do so." This long speech left Mercury exhausted, she could feel Venus itching to contribute by doing something heroically stupid.

"Thank you for your intel," the colonel said, all business. "Do you know where did he come from?"

"No idea," Mercury replied with frustration. "I am sorry, this is as unexpected development for us as it is for you. So far I am unable to penetrate enemy stealth field."

"So what's the plan?" Sailor Sol's voice asked from close behind them. Venus jumped with a brief yelp of surprise jostling Mercury.

There was a blur of movement, then Sailor Iris was standing in front of the demon, barefoot and challenging.

"Is that wise?" Venus voiced her concern.

"That is someone who held up Galaxia for whole four whopping minutes," Sol rebuffed, "just by taunting and dodging alone. I believe in her. Now let's us scheme!"

(シーンブレイク)

"Relay to all groups," colonel Tanaka was ordering from the underground base's cramped command center. "The worms are enemy sensors. Avoid contact when possible. If you have touched any, the enemy knows you are there." Known to the Senshi as their liaison in the self-defense forces, he was in fact commander of a special unit shyly named 'External Threats Emergency Response Team' as if omitting the word 'alien' or the fact it was battalion strength could fool anyone. Made up of the best of the best in all three branches, it was tasked with the sensitive job of supplementing — or, as some politicians were naively thinking, of showing up — the Sailor Senshi.

So far, the Jadeite War — officially called 'series of attacks by international terrorists' as sadly too many people have witnessed rampaging beasts to call it a 'series of gas explosions' — showed the mundane forces lacking. Not in firepower, these girls weren't anything special in that regard. No, the aging colonel was considering their main strength their ability to just happen at the right time at the right place. When inquired about it, Mercury replied with a shrug: "If we understood how magic works, we wouldn't be calling it magic." Quite brilliant, that one. She hypothesized, and he agreed, that this anomaly was either hardwired into their magic, or there was a literal god guiding them invisibly like puppets. Hopefully a benevolent one: this stuff was so beyond man.

"Armor group, hold back when you arrive," he continued his orders. "With the new knowledge of the worms our plan of popping up from behind corners and testing the beast with .50 caliber bursts becomes suicidal. Use as the last resort only, if he starts to move. Set ambushes allowing for fast retreat. The main enemy weapon is equivalent to heavy mortar with remote-controlled incendiary rounds, plan accordingly."

That was a long shot: land based units could almost never reach any site of demon attack in time. Not with the hit and run tactics employed by smart demons, dumb demons with smart masters or just dumb demons with dumb luck, all able to teleport, or cloak, or disguise themselves for civilians. These bastards could be rarely detected before they attacked, the scientists trying to rectify that running in circles even with generous help from sailor Mercury.

Being on the defensive sucketh, but this was man's fate in these conflicts.

Thankfully, there was an another group, limited only by time it took them to scramble and lift off.

"Air group reporting, sir," the communication officer addressed him. "ETA three minutes for gunships, five for assault copters."

"Air group, put gunships on standby circling the enemy at the distance of twenty hundred meters. This demon has AA capacity and is using hostages. Attack at your discretion if it starts shelling the city. Assault group, land sniper teams at ten hundred meters, prepare ambushes in case the demon begins to move. Deploy assault teams at ten hundred meters, then return to standby circling at twenty. All teams, .50 caliber only. Preliminary assessment is 7.62 would only tickle this one. Use caution and better judgment, the demon has the firepower of a heavy mortar battery. Turn the hit and run tactics against him. If .50 cal. proves ineffective, try providing distraction for the Sailor Senshi to exploit."

Many of the assault teams would die if they get there fast enough to come in contact with the enemy. Only pretty sailor-suited girls with their super power of uncanny luck could survive these horrors time and again. Still, the men of ETERT would not sit idle counting on divine intervention. They would fight and die for their countrymen.

If only they get there in time.

(シーンブレイク)

Sailor Iris, meanwhile was dancing in front of the demon, mocking him with her effortless dodges. The street was painted solid with anti-magic slime and writhing worms up to the third story level, the viscous gunk dripping slowly down the walls.

This mass was slippery, the worms whipping through the air up to two meters height, glistening with the same anti-magic slime. It should have been impossible for the girl to even walk straight, but her bare feet weren't slipping. It should have been impossible for her to dodge the flailing worms, but her suit wasn't shredded at all.

But here she was, dashing to and fro effortlessly, with her missing boots being the only clothing damage, her legs splattered with the gunk up to her knees.

The demon had tried different angles of goading, trying to get under her skin. But it looked like she was the one getting under his skin. He was becoming irritated and impatient, forgetting even to use hostages as a cover from possible fire from the roofs.

He tried increasing the anti-magic potential of his slime.

Akane was laughing inside, using her ki to bend the laws of friction, making the slippery mess as easy to walk on as rough asphalt. And using her magic that was working just fine from the knees up to bend the laws of inertia. It was becoming harder to hold the smugness from showing on her face. He haven't expect a _magical_ ·girl to be a proficient ki user, haven't he? What an idiot.

Here he was going again, an overpowered blast of anti-magic slime leaving his maw. Pathetically slow for the Senshi of Speed and Rainbows, it began bursting right away, showering the entire width of the street. She retreated lazily, ducking and dodging through frenzied worms flailing higher than she was tall.

Some people would have thought that sparring with the same partner time and again was a dangerous path to developing set habits. They should have known Ranma better. When pushed and challenged for supremacy, her husband could become outright devious and nasty, and that in itself was a great school of fighting dirty — or evading an opponent that fought dirty. Tried to. These worm tricks felt pathetically slow and predictable.

Iris returned, showing off, threading right through the cloud of still falling droplets. All to ire the enemy even more. Her offensive magical capability was next to nothing, but Akane never let that bother her. Working in a team where everyone supplemented each other was so much nicer than trying to be the best! She was the skirmisher of the group, the first one to get close and personal and leave a fuming enemy distracted, with their back to her comrades. Just like now, with the demon rapidly losing his patience, having uncurled from his defensive spiral to pursue her. If only he got mad enough to start flinging hostages at her.

So she _was_ ·the best — at distraction. The anything-goes school wasn't a shoddy tool either, making her even better at it. And when they needed firepower? Well, she always fought alongside her husband. Who was going to... Right about now.

"Stellar Jet!"

A blinding stream of twisting starfire hit the demon's tail. Flaring up at the point of impact like a small sun it made plastic siding on the walls warp and sag and the hostages cringe from the heat. Then it burned through whatever resistance the demon had and speared him from the tail to the head, a burst of steam and flaming chunks erupting from his maw.

Dodging the grapeshot of flaming demonic flesh Iris rushed to catch the falling hostages. Suffering minor clothing damage from the slime smeared over the black-haired woman, she sped away in a blur.

Unconcerned about the police officer — why should she, when there were soft worms all over the street — Sailor Sol jogged to the front end of the enemy corpse to admire her handiwork. The demon's lips were burned, his eyes milky white, boiled from the inside.

"Will you take him to safety or not?" Venus shouted leaning over the roof edge, Mercury looking over her shoulder.

"But I'll get holes in my suit," the redhead complained nudging the nude man stirring weakly with her bare foot. "This guy is all smeared with this stuff. And he's in the buff, too."

"So what?" Venus snapped.

"But he's a _guy_ ," Sol explained with disdain. "That's just icky!"

"Oh you poor, shy—"

"He's alive!" Mercury rasped in alarm. "The demon is alive!"

"Aw, crud," Sailor Sol grumbled as she shouldered the man and sped away.

"What?！" Venus backed away from the roof edge. More in shock than disbelief, honest.

"The static field is returning," Mercury explained. "He is becoming a blind spot for my scanning again."

A great wet sound rolled over the street when all the worms started flowing back to their master.

"Crescent Beam!" a golden beam hit the unmoving hulk leaving only a smoking pockmark. "Crescent Beam Shower!" a lot of golden beams only left a lot of smoking pockmarks. "Venus Love and Beauty Shock!" The glowing orange heart blasted a larger smoking mark that would have looked impressive on a smaller demon.

"Guys! Do something!" Venus shouted to the two others on the other side of the street, her specialty being precision and finesse, rather than raw firepower or endurance.

"Sparkling Wide Pressure!" **Ba-zap!** "He is still magic-resistant!" Jupiter warned.

"Hit the worms!" Mars snapped, irritated with their slow thinking. "Fire Soul!" She swept her stream of fire back and forth along the street insta-frying any worms and setting unfortunate cars on fire. But her beam was only a meter wide and there was a literal flood of them flowing toward the demon. The street was quickly becoming choked in smoke obscuring the view.

"Crescent Beam Shower!" A shower of golden beams descended leaving the mass of worms unimpressed, crawling over the rare casualties with indifference. "We need a saturation attack!" Venus shouted over the street. "Mine's overkill, it kills too few, too dead!"

"Jupiter Oak Evolution!" A hail of lightning leaves covered the entire width of the street penetrating deeply enough to trash the pavement but barely getting every third worm. "Same Here! Mercury!"

"I'm out, still healing!"

The acrid smoke was reaching the rooftops now. Mars kept sweeping the street, but it was like trying to scoop out a sea with a spoon. There was stirring from below, slurping and other no less disgusting sounds.

Then the hated voice was speaking again, wet and gurgly and unconcerned: "Ahhh, I can't remember anyone getting me that good for a long, long time. Well done, my food, well done."

Mars wasn't letting up her stream of fire.

"Ah, but maybe I should return the favor?" the obscured demon suggested from below. "I'm not that good at fire but after I strip you from your _protections_... Maybe I should try new avenues of actually, you know, cooking before eating? Not crisp, of course but maybe rare, still feeling? I think your... associates would appreciate the sight. What do you think?"

"Mars Flame Sniper!"

The arrow of fire disappeared into the smoke eliciting a startled "Yeowch!" from the demon. So this one actually hurt, being an armor-piercing technique.

The smoke was dissipating, the demon was eying the roof edges appreciatively. Completely unafraid and unconcerned after what Sol did to him. A very disturbing development. What was taking Sol so long?

"Solar Blaze!"  
"World Shaking!"  
"Deep Submerge!"

Three balls of destructive magic, one small, blindingly brilliant, and two larger, a sun yellow one and an emerald green one, streaked in sync orbiting each other before merging into a highly unstable but devastatingly potent charge that lit the street up with mystic silver color no human eye should be able to perceive. A lesser demon would've been blasted to smithereens. This one had a large hole blasted through his middle, disintegrating flesh flying everywhere.

The three Senshi jogged and jumped up to the rest of their comrades, Mars and Jupiter leaping over the street to have a conversation without shouting.

"I say it still feels weird, doing this synergy with you instead of Pluto," Uranus was telling Sol.

"Where is Saturn?" Mercury asked with urgency. "The demon is regenerating _again_ , even after your strike! He must be terribly powerful, we may need as much offensive power as we could get!"

Their resident strategist wasn't considering the might of Sol an overkill. This was telling in on itself.

"We insisted that she stays home," Uranus began voicing their excuse, her tone defensive. "After we heard _what_ ·we'd have to fight..."

"What we have to fight?" Mars asked, growing angry. Well, angrier. "Just what is so special about this one that _she_ ·had to be excused?"

"Well' isn't that pile of dung below a tentacle demon out to rape every female it could get its tentacles on?" Uranus asked, confused. "There are reports of naked women being rescued—"

"No," Venus growled. "Just a tentacle demon out to devour every human it could get is tentacles on! If you missed it, he just suggested stripping Mars naked before _roasting her medium rare_."

"Just rare," the demon moaned, eager to pipe in even in his half-disemboweled state. The flesh around his wound was half melty goo, half intestine-worms writhing in a frenzy, stitching up and pulling together. "The food must be still alive and conscious, after all. Ow."

"We made a grave mistake!" Uranus reeled as it dawned on her. "We'll call her right away!"

"No use," Neptune said. "Too far away, her teleport is still unreliable."

"And your teleport?" Mars asked. "Come on, I know you two have a trick of your own."

"Well, it's..." Glancing at the roof edge Uranus hushed her voice. "It's like Tuxedo Kamen's. One way only, towards where we are needed."

Everyone backed away from the edge as they realized discussing their tactics where a smart enemy could hear them was rather stupid.

"Maybe let Sol use _her_ ·teleport to get Saturn?" Venus suggested pointing at Sol still leaning over the edge.

"Stellar Jet!" the redhead shouted as she launched a brilliant beam of plasma that lit up the whole street.

"Youaaarg!" the demon comented, being sliced open from his hump to his tail.

"I advise against this," Mercury said getting off Venus' back to allow the orange-clad warrior the freedom of movement. "Without going to suicidal levels of power, Saturn is limited to her barrier and her glaive. We have no idea how both would fare against the anti-magic slime. If it is disruptive enough to dispel the barrier or banish the glaive, he could finish her in one shot. She isn't physically fit enough to fight without her aces."

"Stellar Jet!"

"Besides, Sol is busy."

"Guys," Sol interrupted them. "I think he is developing resistance to my techniques!"

"Of course I do!" the demon bellowed from below. "You clever, clever morsel, mixing ki and physical plasma into your magic like that! But I adapt! I overcome! There hadn't been a single hero I wasn't able to dine on, ever! But this farce is dragging for too long, I hate having to crush army men at each step! They are pestilent like roaches, their .50 caliber bullets sting, their stupid missiles ruin my food and their tanks are annoyingly slow to dissolve!"

"Keep attacking him!" Mercury exclaimed suddenly. "I wasn't sure before, but I think you are diminishing his mass! Maybe he cannot create his body out of nothing, the secondary effects I can read indicate that he's down to fifty or so tonnes where he was a hundred before and two hundred if we count his initial sack of worms!"

The Senshi ran to the roof edge to let out a devastating barrage of high level techniques. The street below lit up with blinding flashes of multicolored blasts, the pavement sinking a meter into the ground, the walls cracking and shedding siding. The building under their feet shook.

Then, a large form blurred from below, flying in a high arc to resolve into an ugly, 30-ton frog.

"SURPRISE!" the frog-like demon shouted as he descended onto the shocked Senshi, an irate Sailor Iris clutching at his hind leg.

The Senshi scattered leaping away on sheer reflexes.

All except Mercury, who was too slow, still low on power and exhausted from rapid healing.

"No, you won't!" Iris roared jumping off his leg to dash ahead, aiming to grab Mercury.

"Yes, I will," the demon retorted as his tongue shot out like greased lightning.

Impossibly, the tongue proved to be faster, wrapping around Mercury's midsection and starting to accelerate her upwards, into the descending maw.

Touching the roof lightly as a feather, Iris blurred towards Mercury managing to grab her legs. Then she tried to blur again, her law of diminished inertia against the sticky force of the demon's tongue.

It worked at first, the slimy appendage slipping up Mercury's body, with a side effect of it touching her Sailor Crystal and dispelling the transformation. Then it caught on Ami's ribcage and armpits. Iris struggled to push further, but anchored to the spot, she lost her most defining trait. Against stationary object connected to a magic-dampening tongue, her law failed. They both were lifted off the ground making Iris helpless. Refusing to let Ami go, she began her ascend into the maw of oblivion.

"Akaneeee!" Sailor Sol screamed in terror, still in the process of leaping away, unable to reverse.

Faster and faster, the tongue was contracting, reeling the two girls in. Time was slowing, milliseconds torturously trickling away. Sol began twisting impossibly, turning around in midair, rushing to launch a snap plasma ball. It was like drowning in molasses, pushing impotently, watching her loved one going to die.

Then, all too soon, Ami and Iris floated in. The maw snapped shut with finality.

The building shook, its roof sagging under the impact of a five-meter wide frog slamming into it at high velocity. The snap plasma ball hit his muzzle making him flinch, leaving a small burn.

"I love magical girls," the demon said, pleased with himself. "It's like self-unwrapping candy, I don't even have to peel them!"

Then he gulped, a small lump rolling down his throat.

"Akane..." Sol whimpered, her face ashen.

The others were stricken as well, frozen in shock.

"Dazed. Reeling. About to break," the demon commented with great satisfaction. "You lot finally are as food should be." Seeing Sol's eyes light with crazed determination, he smiled: "So let us begin the chase! Where you desperately—" He flinched as Sol's fist impacted his eye gouging it out. "Owie. Where you desperately chase me down in vain hope to save—"

"Stellar Jet‼！"

It grazed him, burning an ugly scar across his left side as he made a mighty jump that carried him over the roof edge down the street and a good hundred meters away. "In vain hope to save your friends," he shouted jovially, unconcerned for furious Sailor Sol nor for the injuries he sustained, "as their flesh dissolves layer after layer in horrible agony!"

Sol jumped down after him. The rest of the Senshi followed suit.

The demon, again all expectations, turned around to face them head-on.

"World Shaking!"  
"Deep Submerge!"

Two shouts rang as one, two fierce balls of magic streaking towards the enemy. Leaving a golden and emerald trails, the balls merged into one. The joint charge, pure white and overwhelming, reached the enemy... just to reflect off an invisible barrier leaving a brief flash of concentric rings, then crash into the top stories of a nearby building in a shower of glass and concrete shards.

"A good attempt," the demon noted with irony. "But it's time for you to know despair. I've already figured your magic out, you won't even scratch me from now on. Behold my perfect barrier!"

Uranus and Neptune exchanged glances pulling out their Talismans. Neptune then aimed her mirror at the enemy preparing to find his weak spot. Uranus held her lightsabre at ready, preparing to go in close.

"You can prepare all you want!" the demon continued mocking them. "Well? Why are you stalling? They are dissolving bit by bit, you know."

A hailstorm of magic fell on the enemy, reflecting impotently from the barrier and just trashing the surrounding buildings.

"Nothing!" Neptune shouted in frustration as she replaced her mirror preparing to attack like others. "He's like a blind spot!"

"Stellar Jet"

Having snuck up close, Sol released a weaker but quick one-handed version of her twisting beam of blinding flame. _Inside_ ·the barrier. It charred the other slimy side. Uranus rushed the demon like wind to lop off his front left leg.

"Doesn't your wee side hurt?" Sol growled preparing to unleash the full-strength version of her technique that would end the fight cutting the disgusting thing into two roasted halves.

"I wonder where my stomach is," he replied rearing and trying to bat Uranus away with his remaining front paw. This cost him a finger. "With two helpless, unprotected girls inside. Are you going to—"

"Stellar Jet!" It took Sol just a fraction of a second to jump onto his back and change her aim for loping his head off... And stare, stupefied, at her empty hands in smoking gloves.

"Oopsie?" the demon sympathized as he buckled throwing her off his back.

Uranus tried to slice the bastard open, but her lightsabre sputtered out just as she got inside the barrier. Luckily, she expected something like that, so she immediately jumped away, wasting not a second staring at the empty handle in her hands.

"Mokou Takabisha!"

The ki blast hit the enemy's muzzle, unimpeded by the barrier.

"Hee, hee, that tickles!" the demon commented. He then grinned rolling his eyes: "Aaahh, that first one went nicely!"

The Senshi felt their blood freeze.

"Well, what are you waiting for? Join the club!" He opened his maw wide, mocking them.

To everyone's shock, Sol dove in with a mighty roar of pain and anguish. Uranus tried to stop her but almost got a dislocated shoulder for her troubles.

"Sol-chan, no!" Venus screamed in despair, echoed by distressed exclamations from other Senshi.

Still, devouring Ranma proved to be not a pleasant experience as the ki master began tearing at the demon from inside.

He was twitching and squirming, making choked yells and heaving rasps. But the redhead kept tearing down his throat like a bulldozer. For a while her legs were still visible kicking in the frog's mouth, then she went deeper and he could, at last, voice his pain. Bemoaning his ruined taste buds, he was thrashing and rolling around, smashing walls. The Senshi kept their distance, not risking being crushed under the rabidly thrashing multi-ton hulk.

The thing stilled at last, laying still. A tense silence followed.

The demon sat up slowly, supporting his weight with his remaining front paw. "She was strong," he rasped with approval. "But I had the pleasure of digesting even stronger ones."

The remaining Senshi had a realization sinking in that this was it. That they would not see their friends again. Would not even walk away from this battle.

And still no word from Sailor Moon. Was she eaten already? Was she held up by something silly and trivial?

"Let's have another chase?" the demon suggested to the five despairing girls. "This one is strong, I feel her resisting, even if her ki won't... What the...?" He frowned, puzzled.

Then he blew up, a sickly green light flashing momentarily through the tears.

The Senshi dove for cover as hail of bits and pieces hit the walls turning the ruined street into a complete dump. The walls became decorated with flaps of demon hide, torn intestineworms and other sticky details.

"How did you like the Perfect Lion Roar Blast, you asshole?" a nude Ranma growled standing up from a crater surrounded with a starburst of slime and squishy chunks. The demon didn't reply, smeared across the street. "That's for..." She suddenly gagged, spitting vigorously while trying to shake off the slime dripping in viscous threads from her body. "Blarg! Was he refueling in sewers or what?"

"Where are Akane and Ami?" asked Jupiter emerging from behind a totaled vending machine. "I see you survived, with no burns, even!"

"Ami is under that car!" Neptune pointed, looking at the street through her mirror. Mars and Venus, with some effort, pushed the ruined car aside, very fearful of what body horrors they would find.

They felt a wave of relief seeing their comrade almost intact. Ami tried to to stand up. She was shaking, her entire body covered in angry red rash.

"Are you all right?" Mars asked worriedly, despite the obvious fact that she wasn't. Ami swept the street with her hazy, unfocused eyes. Seeing a trash bin, she hastily stumbled to it, threw the lid off, bent down over it practically putting her head in... then she vomited at last.

In one of the ruined shops, a pile of shelves flew aside revealing a grumpy, slime-encrusted Akane, her hair stuck in a figure that would put a cow-lick to shame. Gagging and rubbing at her stinging eyes, her first concern was for Ami: "Guys, we should wash her of that gastric juice!"

"Akane!" the redhead was overjoyed to see her mate alive and well. "When he... I thought I would never see you again...! I... Ah, shucks, we have to wash this gunk off real quick!" Unable to contain the silly grin that was blossoming on her slime-smeared face, she hurried into ruined stores, her bare feet crunching over sharp debris and broken glass like nothing. "Drats, these restrooms are trashed! The water mains torn too."

"Don't worry!" Akane shouted after her. "My ki is protecting me, I think." She stopped to focus on her extra senses. "It feels like... yes, there's a drain and I'm prickling all over. It's definitely trying to eat at me... Are we sure he is dead this time?"

"Just take a look around!" Venus told her with elation in her voice. "Sol tore him to mittens!"

There was no demon as such, only gunk splattered all over the walls. That was reassuring.

"Everyone, search for a source of water!" Akane shouted.

"There are none nearby," Neptune said as she surveyed the street through her mirror. "Water mains around here are damaged, cracked and leaking..." She then aimed her mirror at Ami. "But don't worry. It seems she is starting generating it on her own."

"What?" Akane said, puzzled. It looked to her that beads of sweat were precipitating on the huddled up girl's skin rapidly growing in numbers and size.

"Guys! Are you all right?" a winded Usagi huffed, emerging unexpectedly like Jack-in-the-box. "Ack, mommy, EWWWWW...!"

"Why aren't you transformed?" Mars laid into her. "Is living too bothersome for you?"

"I... I can't," replied Usagi, her voice heavy with guilt.

"Not again!" Jupiter threw her hands in the air. "So it's a new enemy...? I don't like the idea of fighting such things every week."

"What do you mean, 'not again'?" Ranma asked, emerging from the shadowy rubble-cavern of the nearby building. "And where did you get the new enemy part?"

"When meatball-head here is ready to achieve a new level, her old magic ceases to work," explained Mars. "She is useless until she re-attunes her spirit to find out how her new powers work."

"Mars is mean to me again!" complained Usagi. "And that happened only a couple times."

"Every time because of a new, stronger enemy," added Jupiter. "How do you think, did that abomination look like a new enemy?"

"I hope not," Venus suddenly looked a bit greener around the gills. "For me, one gourmet was one too many."

"A gourmet?" Usagi asked worriedly as she surveyed the splattered walls around. "What do you mean?"

"Did you even listen to your communicator?！" Mars snapped at her. "Coming here untransformed... What if we were still fighting him? Without the boost, you'd have no chance to dodge! He'd swallow you in a second!"

"Swallow?" Usagi inquired nervously.

"Ask Ami," Mars pointed at the pitiful form of dark-haired genius hugging the trash bin. "She spent the longest in his stomach!"

Usagi gasped rushing to the huddled up Ami. Staggering away for just a second, she crouched down beside her friend who was still dry heaving over a trash bin.

"Ami-chan, are you...?" she asked quietly. "I'm so sorry I wasn't there." She placed her hand on her friend's sticky shoulder.

Mercury raised her head, her eyes focusing for the first time after the battle. "I... hic... I'm all right, Usagi-chan." She smiled weakly. "He... He did not have time to digest me, he just frightened me badly."

Usagi's face lit with a genuine smile. "I'm so glad..." She let out a breath of relief. "Wait a moment! Why is there cold sweat all over your body? Are you ill? You look burned!"

"Don't mind it," Ami waved it away. "It's not sweat, it's unformed magic." She nodded at Ranma, fiery sparks running up and down the redhead's body. "It seems this vile stuff is losing its effect." She stoot up with effort, large droplets rolling down her faster and faster, washing the viscous slime off, quickly becoming rivulets. "Better stand back, just in case."

After that, the process accelerated sharply. The rivulets grew into taut jets of water that surrounded Ami like a cocoon, snowflakes erupting around her with an icy blast ow winter blizzard. In a blue flash the jewel of her Sailor Crystal materialized in front of her chest, then the jets grew thin and disappeared, the snow falling down. The sailor suit of Mercury began growing back around her in patterns of a window frosting over.

"Wow," Usagi was amazed. "How did you do that without transforming?"

"I don't know," Mercury admitted honestly. "It kind of just returned. Attention everyone, I will clean here a bit! Ranma, come here!" After the redhead complied, she launched her medium technique: "Shine Aqua Illusion!"

Powerful jets of icy water rushed in all directions hitting two martial artists and a couple Senshi who were too slow. "Ahh, that's better!" said the thoroughly soaked but squeaky clean Mercury.

"Thanks, no thanks," grumbled a wet Jupiter whose ponytail lost its tie, the wet locks plastered all over her face.

"Er..." injected the completely dry Usagi holding her hand — the one she touched Mercury with — aloft, like a dead rat. "Anyone got a napkin?"

"Here," Neptune handed her a napkin she produced from somewhere.

"Hey," Ranma asked, "does anyone know what Pluto is doing?"

The flashes and sparks dancing all over her body were growing in intensity, her sailor crystal a brilliant point, her leotard reforming like a reversed picture of burning paper.

Akane felt her powers returning as well, making her Sailor Iris again.

"She is not responding." Neptune shrugged. "So, who knows?"

"How typical of her!" Iris snorted like an angry bull. "Always scheming, keeping us in the dark, planning something..."

Sol thought her wife was utterly wrong but she wisely decided to keep her mouth shut.

"Hey!" Venus attracted everyone's attention. "Do you hear that? Feels like someone's crying." She went down the street, then looked under one of the rare surviving cars. "How did _he_ ·get here...?"

Others quickly gathered around her, four of them effortlessly moving the car aside revealing a sob-wracked carcass of Happousai.

"Why, you..." Iris grabbed the old pervert intent on pummeling him. But he looked so pitiful, so listless, that her fist lowered against her will. "What were you scheming here, huh?"

Happousai just kept sobbing and babbling inarticulately, his eyes rolled up.

"Enough, leave him be," Sol put a hand on her shoulder. "He was probably swallowed by the demon too."

"You think?" Iris looked at the carcass in her hands with a squeamish pity. "All right, let's leave him alone." She carefully put Happousai back into the trash bin closing the lid. Muffled sobs, hiccups and cries of "don't", "pretty ladies" and "abomination" could be heard from inside.

"Let's make sure the demon is really dead," Mercury said as she summoned her visor and computer. "Hmm... Still a lot of static, but— A paparazzi!"

The Senshi instantly surrounded Usagi hiding her from unwanted eyes. Iris, finding at last someone to vent her frustrations on, stomped angrily towards the overly bold reporter: "Scram, now!"

"Stop, you idiot!" Sol yelled after her.

The paparazzi flashed his camera a couple times, then ran away as if his tail was on fire.

"Baka-baka-baka-baaaaaka," groaned Sol, facepalming.

"What's wrong?" Iris did not understand.

"You again forgot the huge gap in power levels between you and us others!" Sol explained it for her. "Just look at yourself, will you?"

Iris glanced down, fearful of what she'd find. It wasn't as bad as she feared. It was much, much worse. Even her sailor Crystal haven't fully materialized yet, flickering like a ghostly lump of rainbows. There were rainbows dancing all over her body, and her leotard was trying to reform valiantly... So much slower than Sol's or Mercury's that there was barely a palm-sized piece of fabric covering her naughty bits. Oh, wait. The right nipple was starting to be covered too now.

"See?" Sol summed it up grimly. "Now remember the rumors Uranus said already spreading about this enemy...? Yeeeah, I see you are getting it. Now imagine what tabloids would start publishing, with photos of you in the buff on their front covers!"

Iris went green. Then she went purple. Roaring in impotent fury, she slammed her fist into a nearby lamppost pulverizing the concrete. The lamppost fell with a groan, squashing a couple cars.

"I think we should warn our allies," Mercury said hearing a sound of helicopters in the distance. She opened the channel to JSDF: "Mercury here, with status update. We have defeated the— Oh no, he is alive! The static effect is rising again!"

"What?！" Sol yelled in disbelieving anger. "But he's smeared all over the street!"

"How should I know?" Mercury shouted back. "He is going to... U—" remembering she was still on air she choked on the name, instead pointing at Usagi and yelling: " _You_ , move!"

"Who, me?" Usagi asked in confusion pointing customarily at her own nose.

"NOW‼！" roared Mercury.

What happened the next moment looked much like an explosion played backwards. The demon chunks from all across the street flew towards one point, instantly forming a huge misshapen lump.

Right where Usagi stood just a second ago.

(シーンブレイク)

October 2009 — February 9, 2016

 **Ding!** Tropes unlocked:  
Anti-Magic  
Kill It Through Its Stomach  
Sequential Boss  
Victory Fakeout

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— Stealth111  
— Climhazard  
— N. Kuta  
— Tuuttiki  
— Orphus users (13 bugs so far)


	5. Defeat the Undefeatable

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled v1.5**

 **Chapter 5,  
Defeat the Undefeatable**

"Usagi-chan!" rang their simultaneous shout. Fire and lightning fell upon the slimy cocoon tearing into it, splashing it apart...

"Hey, hey, careful," the face forming on the cocoon side warned them. "Aren't you afraid to hurt your friend? To kill her accidentally?

The Senshi froze. Sol started lowering her hands that almost released an all-incinerating stream of plasma.

The slimy cocoon wobbled, smoothing, as it took the shape of a three-meter onion-shaped sack resting on thick, short tentacles. Towards its top it was narrowing into a short slobbering trunk. The face was a bas-relief on the side of the sack, its mouth barely a depression. Overall this new hulk was about ten tons.

"Ahh, alive and kicking again," the demon wobbled stretching out his trunk. "You," he turned lumbering awkwardly to face Sol, "are a fooool. Thank youu for procrastinating—"

The blinding stream struck to blossom against a barrier, only managing to blow windows out and set a couple buildings on fire.

"..thus letting me erect my awesome barrier." He wobbled. "She is thrashing so pleasantly choking on my gastric juice. Such a tasty terror, I—"

He shut up, a rose plunged deeply into his eye.

Raising one awkwardly thick tentacle he tore the rose out together with his eye. He grew a new one instantly, then turned to Tuxedo Kamen who landed after a jump down from the roofs: "That didn't even hurt! You could shoot a dozed of these, I won't even—"

The cane suddenly lengthened gouging the same eye out. With a grumble of discontent the demon grew it back once more.

"Mokou Takabisha!" released point-blank upwards, the ki blast actually lifted the enemy off the ground. The sack-like body shook like jelly as it crash-landed on its face. The Senshi made to attack hand-to-hand but he flicked his trunk from side to side spraying slime. The stream was nothing like the ones he was able of releasing in his initial form, but none the less it made them jump back.

Sol began smashing and tearing at the tentacle roots exploiting the fact that the bottom end was a dead zone for the trunk while the tentacles themselwes were thick and slow. Tuxedo Kamen hit the trunk with his rose, but it dispelled. Now the trunk was squirting from puncture wounds as well, increasing its defensive proprties.

The stalemate was broken by Sailor Iris: almost naked anyway, she rushed head-on. It was completely naked Akane who clutched at the trunk wrapping her arms and legs around it, twisting and crushing. The appendage inflated twitching and hitting her against the ground, but it was no use.

The Senshi rushed the enemy all at once, their bare feet kicking at him with all their tenfold strength. The rubbery sack was wobbling, but taking no damage. Tuxedo Kamen was making powerful thrusting blows with his cane and have even wounded the enemy a little, but his cane was already melting at the end and flickering out of existence. Sailor Sol had been the only one making any progress, but judging by her frustrated shouts of "why aren't they tearing" she was having trouble.

It ended with the demon wobbling powerfully as he made a physics-defying circular motion, twirling around and making everyone jump back. He righted himself to rest again on his thinned out tentacles. The circular motion traveled upwards his body ending in the trunk swinging violently, throwing Akane off. She tumbled through the air to land on three points some fifty meters away, her bare heels digging furrows in the asphalt.

Sol, meanwhile, launched three ki-blasts that only made the sack wobble a bit as if from slight slaps.

"Were you thinking that was all?" the demon asked in a kind voice. "Were you thinking that I could be defeated? That my vulnerability to ki was an innate trait? Well, surprise! I was just giving myself a handicap, bored of easy victories. But now, when I—"

His rant was interrupted by two dozen of roses turning him into pincushion. He ripped his pierced eyes and out with irritation, growing new ones right away. Then he wobbled turning to face Tuxedo Kamen who was breathing heavily, down on his knee. "Such an impolite bunch, always interrupting me... You are her man, aren't you? Look then, look and feel impotent!" He wobbled stronger, performing something like a belly-dance. "Knowing that..."

A dozen more roses hit him. The demon repeated his eye-replacing trick. "Tell you what," he said snitely. "I'll suck in air now..." The trunk jerked making a slurping sound. "Here, now she can breathe. Lookit her gulping air greedily. And now we smooothly raise pi aitch to one... Ahh, I see you realize what this means, don't you...? In a minute it will rise to zero. In two minutes, to minus one. Got it?"

Most of the girls did not understand, but the look of horror on Mercury's and Tuxedo Kamen's faces told them enough. They again rushed the demon in hand-to hand, despite the risk to lose their transformations. This was more an act of desperation, as was the hailstorm of roses that turned enemy's muzzle into veritable flower-bed for a couple seconds. Tuxedo Kamen was barely holding upright, pale like Death warmed over. The demon was wobbling smugly under the barrage of kicks, not even deigning to squirt. The Senshi kicking furiously at him were as effective as a flock of hamsters trying to beat up a car tyre. Akane was running to join, but without her Iris magis she was slowed to a mare ki user.

"One point one," the demon was counting mockingly. "One. Point nine. Ten-percens sulfuric acid. Point seven. Twenty percent. Point fi— What the...?"

His body was beginning to glow from inside, its blood-red and sickly green composition showing. Brighter and brighter.

"It's madness!" the demon shouted, indignant. "This is _fundamentally_ ·impossible! You see...? Funda—"

The shining discus bursting out between his eyes was as unexpected for him as it was for the sailor-suited warriors.

"She have transformed!" shouted Sol, the first to shake off her stupor. "Fire!"

A hailstorm of magic fell upon the demon... bouncing off the damned barrier and raining on the surrounding buildings, further turning the street into a war zone.

"Ha! Did you think—" the demon began, to be interrupted with another dozen roses that flew through the barrier like it wasn't there and the returning moon tiara disc that made the barrier burst into sparkles with the sound of a colossal gong. The tiara disappeared into the demon's side to fly out again in other direction.

"I will win anyway!" the demon shouted re-raising his barrier and regenerating the tiny cuts. "I can raise this barrier a hundred times and more! She will melt before hurting me with this tiny blade!"

The barrier burst right away as the tiara returned, and the sack was assaulted by an elemental storm. The blasts were flashing all colors, slowly but surely grinding away, pitting with holes growing faster than he could heal. The sack was beginning to burst, bubbly-hissy acid squirting from the tears.

"What about your friend?！" the demon screamed finally losing his contemptuous nonchalance. "For whom was I preparing an unsolvable dilemma? Huh? Huh?"

"Resistance to our own magi-i-ic," Sol sang in an angelic voice that contrasted sharply with her nasty grin.

Then there was searing light. Everyone around cringed covering their faces.

The demon gurgled, what remained of his body twitching. There was a two-meter wide hole in the three-meter sack making it look like an ugly donut. In the hole stood a smoking Sailor Moon, covering her face with her arms and hissing in pain.

"Th.. Thank you," she hissed through her teeth as she jumped outside. To sink up to her ankles into the burning, bubbling asphalt. Jumping away, she stood straight and caught the returning tiara.

"Are you all right?" Mercury said worriedly as she noticed the white of Moon's uniform scorched brown ah the elbows. Her nose, ears and knees were reddened, covered with blisters. The skirt was burning on one side, the feet of her boots covered with clumps of hot tar.

"I'm fine!" sending a gentle smile at the stoically silent Tuxedo Kamen, she grinned predatorily as she patted the burning skirt down. "I never felt better, all doubts are gone, the path is clear. It's a rare case today, the enemy is not deserving mercy. He doesn't even deserve 'in the name of the Moon'. This is not punishment. This is garbage disposal."

Finishing her non-typical speech, the warrior of love and justice sent the glowing disc of her tiara on a short arch. Then again and again, butchering the mutilated hulk. Soon the ugly donut fell apart, the heap sizzling and spitting on the hot pavement.

The others joined in rapidly burning the enemy body down. Soon there was only slime left, forming a shallow, widening pool.

"I'll go wash myself!" Akane shrieked in panic. With the heat of battle gone, her unsuppressed feminine modesty was wailing to her like an air raid siren. She ran away, covering herself, her bare heels flashing.

"Is this, finally, it?" Venus asked, hopeful.

"Let's go home," Moon said with a smile of content.

"He is still alive!" Mercury warned.

"How the heck?！" Sol went livid. "There's a pool less than ankle deep! Wait, I'll burn it..."

"Haven't it occurred to you," the demon's disembodied voice reached from everywhere at once, "that that hulk was but a virtual avatar...? Simply speaking, a projection of true me onto the mortal world?"

"Bastard," Son spat. "Try, project yourself again."

"Oh, I will," he replied with ominous glee in his voice. "You will rue your brashness yet. But first..."

"Warning," a melodic emotionless voice piped in, coming from everywhere in the same manner. "Your quota is reached, overdraft is thirty seven Petawatts for synchronizing continuums. Close the connection before borrowing again."

"But... but... but..." the demon mewled, his voice lost.

Sol snorted choking on her laughter.

"You are not a demon at all," Mercury accused. "You are human using machines to pretend being one!"

"And your battery is dead," Sol needled.

"You... you..." the enemy hissed, livid. "I'll—"

"Attention," the melodic voice proclaimed, emotionless. "Critical overdraft. Cutoff two hundred eighteen Petajoules. Cancel all current operation in two hundred seconds, otherwise your account will be suspended for the next hundred years."

"That's nothing," the enemy growled, growing reckless. "Three minutes are three minutes. It'll be _enough_."

An ominous silence followed.

"What was that? What did he do?" Sol asked, alarmed, as she was looking around.

"He asked for support from some sort of system," Mercury replied tensely, trying to locate the unknown threat. "I can't see anything, there's only static around! Be careful, 218 Petajoules are bad news. With so much power he can burn entire Tokyo to ashes..." She fell silent, staring dumbly at the blank screen of her suddenly dead computer.

"Is it me, or does the ground tremble?" Venus asked, nervous.

The enemy started laughing.

Huge crystalline spires rose around them in a circle tearing through buildings, surrounding the sailor-suited warriors together with a whole city block. Angular, curved slightly inward like claws, half of their facets mirror, other half charcoal black.

The enemy started laughing louder.

Mercury gave out a pitiful exclamation when her transformation reversed, leaving her plain Ami. Luckily, clothed this time — but it took her a while to realize that.

A couple seconds later the same happened to the others, Sol and Moon staying half a second longer.

"Now you're mine!" the enemy narrated making many girls shudder: there was so much primeval malice and gloating in his voice.

"Warning," the melodic voice of the unknown machine cut in. "The construct mighty body is being throttled."

The enemy cussed up a storm going more and more apeshit as the mechanical voice kept listing emotionlessly point by point: "Subconstruct instant regeneration: limited to five per cent. Subconstruct bottomless stomach: disabled, not enough energy for the subspace pocket. Subconstruct material form: switched to basic mode test booger note to self delete this crap. Subconstruct innumerable grasping tentacles: limited to one unit."

"I'll remember this, you whretches!" the enemy shrieked, beyond livid. Particularly because of Ranma snorting with laughter. She just couldn't help herself. "Ahs-three Eet Usuht, activate the mighty body!"

There was a fissure opening in the air, and not where they finished the previous hulk off!

"Usako‼！" Mamoru screamed in anguish seeing it happening right next to Usagi.

The fissure disgorged a... booger, for the lack of a better word. It was thin, shapeless, six or seven meters long, bristling with human arms serving also as legs. On its front end a huge, disproportionally well muscled torso was sticking upright, about twice human size, its hammy arms ending in even more disproportionately large hands. This epitome of ugliness was crowned with a smallish head of a cartoonish cave-man with massive jaw and thick eye ridges.

Usagi wasn't a fool, she dashed away.

The freak lashed with its tail end to catch her with the arms growing out of it. Shaking with evil, gloating laughter, he lifted her up to his face: "Had your fun playing...? Now you are mine!" He took the frantically kicking Usagi in one of his ham hands. "Having a hard time without your magic, eh? Why aren't you laughing?"

A ki blast hit his elbow, doing no damage but shaking Usagi loose. She plopped down and displayed a champion ability to backpedal on all fours.

"Time's a ticking," Ranma reminded him mockingly.

"Ah, thank you for reminding me!" he grinned. "Don't worry, I'll take you away to my place where your magic is useless! _Ahs-three Eet Uhsuht, return portal!_ ·I'll take all of you!"

The crystalline spires glinted once. A hundred meters _behind_ ·the girls a huge, pitch-black ellipse of a portal sprang into existence. About six meters wide, its edge flowing like charcoal-black smoke spiraling inward, it looked much like a maelstrom. All debris near it, including smashed cars and trash from second and third story windows, was immediately sucked in and disappeared in the abyss, receding rapidly.

Everyone realized: if you fall in, there will be no return. Cornered, trapped, and forced to fight on !

The freak in the front grinned as he raised his tail end like a scorpion as he began shooting a long and prehensile tentacle catching the girls one by one and throwing them onto the middle of his body where dozens of hands clutched at them. By stroke of ill luck, the first one was Usagi again! Then Makoto and Rei.

Those remaining free dashed to the sides, to go around, to become baits on the open ground and stall for time, to not let him carry their comrades away! Because there was fate worse than death writ large on the freak's face.

Everyone but Mamory. Tearing a piece of rebar from the debris under his feet he rushed the enemy with inhuman strength and speed.

No one was able to help nor stop him. Dodging one ham hand by sheer miracle he slammed his weapon right into enemy's eye. Bellowing in surprise the booger batted the assaliant away with his other ham hand. There was a sickening crunch and the selfless protector flew to the very wall landing like a ragdoll.

"Mamo-chan!" Usagi cried tugging desperately at the hands clutching her.

Haruka and Michiru tried to grab the battered body as they were passing along the right wall. But they just got caught.

Minako and Ami were dashing along the left wall, Ranma covering them. The redhead deflected the incoming tentacle with a well placed kick... and flew away as her foot stuck to it like it was magnetized. Shaking her off to the others the freak shot his tentacle again... He missed widely as there was Ranma clutching to it after she used the grasping hands as a springboard. Shaking her off again with irritation and making sure the grasping hands clutched properly, he turned back to the two girls almost out of his reach. He shot his tentacle... Missing again because his body was suddenly lifted off the ground. Not all of it, as it was long and flexible, but the rear end where he was shooting his tentacle from.

Running flat out — they'd made 100 meters in 10 seconds or less — Minako and Ami ran out of reach. Then proceeded ducking into some shop.

Steaming, the enemy turned around to glare back. The multitude of arms was holding down five strugglingg girls, black silk pants and a red shirt. Ranma was bouncing some distance away, dressed in undershirt and boxers, making faces at him.

"It's nothing," he spat venomously. "These ones will be enough!" Pointedly ignoring the redhead, he crawl-hobbled up to the unmoving Mamoru to poke him with a huge finger. This caused yells of anguish on Usagi's part but her loved one didn't even twitch. "Drats, I overdid it again. Missed such a perfect— What am I doing!" He hurried towards the portal, the mincing arms buckling under the weight of his front part.

Ami and Minako ran out of their cover to chase the enemy, hurrying to use the fleeting chance that he'd slow down while catching them! But they were too late.

And yet, the freak slowed down. His arms were pushing, straining, buckling under the weight of the unbalanced hulk. The front end collapsed onto the pavement.

"Just you wait," the enemy promised with malice to Ranma clutching at his tail, her bare feet leaving furrows in the asphalt. "When we're back at my place you'll learn how it is when ki is not working as well." Twisting the very end of his body he shot his tentacle at her abdomen. Her hands slipped tearing off flaps of hide.

The enemy continued crawling towards the portal.

Ranma was twisting and kicking fiercely, but the force holding her on the tentacle was akin to magnetism rather than stickiness or suckers. Her body was being attracted to it like a nail to a magnet. No matter how she was pushing, some part of her body was always staying in contact. The enemy wasn't stupid either, keeping her high in the air. Then, seeing Minako and Ami closing in, he stretched out his meaty hand grabbing Ranma around the waist at the fifth attempt, holding her back to him to prevent her from using her arms as a leverage.

Freed, the tentacle shot out. The two girls tumbled at once in different directions. Cussing, the freak stopped to keep shooting. The two were dodging frantically, but having only basic training and almost no ki strenghtening they were caught all too soon.

"Well," the demon enemy concluded with a sadistic smile, "It's time for you to go where you will be totally powerless." Casting an appraising glance at Mamoru's body he mumbled something akin to 'naw, what if he croaks by himself' as he hurried toward the portal "Just imagine begging me for death... And don't you think I'm all about digesting. Without distractions, the possibilities are limitless! We can skin your faces, girls love that. We can film a porn flick for the connoisseurs of guro... A good idea, by the way! The surviving ones could then watch the entire process again in replay."

"I see you're weak in yer head, if your imagination's so dull," Ranma needled him pushing with her hands and feet. It was futile: the fist was strong enough.

The needling failed as well: the enemy just squeezed her in reply, continuing co crawl-hobble towards the portal. A small wind could be felt already.

The black ellipse was growing closer, feeling like it was reeking of death.

"What now?" the freak barked as he half-turned to the right.

A figure in cammies jumped out of a second story window to the right, crushing a car roof as it landed, then tumbling awkwardly behind it. The tentacle lashed blowing side windows out — and began reeling back, empty.

A camou helmet rose above the hood to the right. Below its edge Ranma's sharp eyes caught loose chestnut hair eyes filled with fierce mercilessness. Finally, there was a bore of a large-caliber rifle on the front face of a large muzzle brake, like a small, flat metallic brick.

The barrel shifted moving in an inward spiral. Then this elephant gun thundered, the muzzle flash billowing to the sides. The enemy's elbow was smashed, the huge arm hanging limp and releasing Ranma.

The redhead dashed to the middle of the body, to free her comrades.

The tentacle lashed at the hood, but the desperately brave soldier wasn't there anymore.

Ranma easily dodged the awkwardly grasping hands ducking as she moved along the side, dodging again... The fake demon swore jerking a dozen broken arms with crushed elbows. Her comrades-in-arms supported the martial artist with shouts of joy. While the enemy was busy deciding which hands to regenerate first, she freed Makoto and Haruka. They made to help but she sent them away with kicks: "No! Run! Don't let him catch you!"

Incensed, the enemy lashed at her with his tentacle instead of shooting at the ones running away. Of course he missed: she did not have to cover them with her body.

The freak had already regenerated both his massive arm and the arms broken by Ranma and was now turning around to face her, bending in an arch.

The soldier exploited this by popping out from behind the trunk, to the left. The large-caliber rifle thundered again, smashing a couple hands dangerously close to the trapped girls. The hands started growing back immediately, but Minako almost managed to tear free: when the enemy was concentrated on something else, these appendages were acting stupid and uncoordinated, simply grasping at anything with no more force than a normal human hand. Ranma's shirt, for example, was still being clutched at.

The redhead was there instantly, brazenly ignoring the grasping hands. Breaking a couple more, she jerked Minako free throwing the blonde so hard she barely kept her footing when she landed.

There was muted "Support Kuribayashi with fire" and two or three more large caliber rifles began hitting uselessly at the enemy's torso.

Growling in malice the freak shot his tentacle with such a force that it slammed the car into the wall. The soldier tumbled out in the last possible moment, turning out to be a large-breasted woman practically covered in weapons and harnesses. There was a literal belt of narrow pouches across her abdomen.

Lifting her elephant gun again, she smashed the tail end. The tentacle being reeled into it jammed for a second, flopping impotently to the ground. But only for a second: the freak had truly hurricane regeneration.

Ranma meanwhile was trying to free more, but the remaining girls were held down with too many arms.

The enemy was circling to the right, aiming to get one of his attackers with his large hands. Then he concentrated on Ranma while shooting his tentacle at the soldier. The woman in green tried to roll aside, but she began moving too soon and he corrected his aim. The rifle clattered to the ground.

But even caught she wasn't giving up. While being dragged towards the trap, she managed to pull out her handgun, determine that the tentacle was impervious to its rounds and break a couple more arms, which allowed Ranma to finally free Rei. Now it was a fourth prey getting away leaving the enemy with three plus the woman in green. Who still wasn't giving back: even after her handgun was taken away, being twisted into a knot, she managed to free her left hand, pull out a knife and start hacking and slashing hamstringing elbows and wrists.

Seeing the woman not even thinking of freeing herself, Ranma tried to use her effort to free Usagi at least. For that, she risked entering the range of the grasping hands.

But the cut wounds were regenerating too fast while dozed of hands clutching at her slowed the redhead enough for the enemy to catch her with the tentacle: noone expected him to be able to release it slowly and sneakily. He hrabbed her with his ham hand shrieking "I'll crush you, damn gnat‼！"

Ranma grunted, tensing up: the enemy put some serious effort into crushing her.

"What sort of tough vermin are you?" he spat when all his attempts failed. He raised Ranma high, then slammed her face first into the pavement, causing cries of anguish from the trapped girls. "Well, how it feels... Are you made of iron or what?！" he went livid seeing her barely bruised face, asphalt crumbles falling off. There was a dent in the pavement. "Why you, little shit!" He started slamming her into the pavement time and again. "Will you! Just! Die! Already!"

"Ranko-chan!" Makoto and Haruka cried out rushing to help her, unable to watch.

"Stop... Stay back..." Ranma hissed out, but it was too late. Both girls were caught without causing the enemy any harm.

A bullet pierced the freak's biceps but he only winced passing the redhead to his other ham-hand. She almost got free, her wriggling would make any worm envious.

"Let's see how you'd fare when I rip you open!" Losing his patience, the enemy gripped the redhead with both hands, aiming to slam her abdomen-first onto a sharp end of a broken lamppost. "Die, little bitch!"

"Bike Fu!" Akane voiced her dynamic entry, fully dressed this time.

And slammed a motorcycle into the freak's right wrist.

The meaty hand spasmed releasing Ranma's legs. The redhead contorted in most impossible ways, pushing the fingers on the left wrist apart with her feet and wriggling free, leaving the enemy with only her undershirt. When he caught his balance, his grasping hand only caught air: she was tumbling away.

"Would you stop popping out of woodworks‼！" the freak screeched, spit flying everywhere, as he tried to flatten Akané with a palm strike, so livid he even forgot about his tentacle. She dodged nimbly. "That's it, enough crushing! I'll be burning you! Alive‼！" His voice caught, overwhelmed by hatred. " _Ahs-three Eet Uhsuht, Napalm strike at this bitch!_ " He pointed at Akané.

"Nooo!" the bruised Ranma cried up in horror as she rushed the enemy again. "Akané‼！"

"Invalid target zone," a melodic disembodied voice replied, coming from everywhere at once. "Female dog was not found in the set coordinate range. Please formulate your request correctly."

Ranma laid into him with ferocity, trying to slam his teets into his throat, nimbly using the grasping ham hands as springboards. But it was like punching a sandbag. Something was crunching giving under her fists, then the dented face was righting itself. When she jumped back to formulate a better pattern, a heavy bullet blew half the freak's skull away. But he didn't even notice that, yelling, spit flying: "Dumb machine‼ _Ahs-three Eet Uhsuht!_ ·Napalm strike! Target person named Akané!"

"Ubiquitous target zone." The disembodied voice wasn't giving up. "Too many persons named Akané. Your account does not allow for the required targeting mode."

"You bloody mechanical moron‼！" roared the fake demon. "Well, fine! _Ahs-three Eet Uhsuht!_ ·Napalm strike! Gbu—

Desperate, Ranma shoved her foot into his mouth. Alas, it only worked for a moment. The hateful voice continued, disembodied, coming from everywhere at once: "Target all persons named Akane in a hundred meter radius around me! Target zone is a sphere, diameter three meters, aligned at the target's center of mass!"

{!-Ranma in desperation shoved her foot into his mouth. Alas, it only helped for a moment. The hated voice continued disembodied, coming from everywhere: "Target all persons named Akané in a hundred-meter radius from me! Target zone is a sphere, diameter three meters, linked to the center of mass of each person!" -}

"Request accepted," confirmed the disembodied voice. A yellowish cloud started forming around Akané. She dashed away in terror. "Please wait, performing final adjustment of the target zone."

"Burn now!" the demon's eyes were smoldering with hatred. The yellowish cloud was following Akané like it was glued to her, the suffocating chemical aerosol forming around her from the thin air.

The freak threw the despairing redhead away.

The invisible snipers kept shooting, he was twitching slightly but that was all. Even at five per cent his regeneration worked hellishly fast.

"Akaneeee‼！" Ranma's voice caught.

"Akane-chan‼！" chorused the trapped girls trying to break free.

The JSDF woman was silent, only hacking and slashing even more fiercely.

Akané cringed curling into a ball in anticipation of a horrible death...

"Thirty seconds," the melodic voice announced dispassionately. "Cancel all current oprations or your account will be suspended."

"What?！" hollered the self-proclaimed demon. "You, little bitches! Just you..." Coming to his senses he spoke rapidly in undisguised terror: " _Ahs-three Eet Uhsuht!_ ·Cancel mighty body! Cancel suffusion zone! Close connection! Cancel the return portal!"

"Mighty body canceled," the voice confirmed. The hulk began meltng, the arms flowing off the girls in disgusting chunks of liquefying muscles and softening bones. "The suffusion zone cannot be canceled, close the connection instead. Your command close connection is rejected, you do not have sufficient privileges. You have to have access level error, access denied of be an error, access denied."

"What the hell?！" enemy's disembodied voice bayed.

"Five seconds."

" _Ahs-three Eet Uhsuht!_ " the wannabe demon's disembodied voice shrieked in primal terror. "Close conne—" And was cut with a sharp click.

"The grace period has passed," the melodic voice concluded. "Level three user Ahs-Ahstat-Taheet, your account is suspended."

"Mamo-chan!" Usagi rushed to the side of her fallen loved one not even noticing the boogers falling off her clothing. Ami followed her suit.

"Ack!" Akané ran out of the pool of unlit napalm. She stank of gasoline and chemicals. "Somebody, wash this stuff offa me!" She then saw torn wires sparkling above, let out a shriek of terror and dashed away in a blind panic. Ranma ran after her, covering herself with one hand to avoid flashing her mammaries too much.

"Look, there's somebody there!" Michiru noted as she climbed out of the remains pile shaking the boogers off her elegant dress. Thankfully, this stuff was stretching rather than sticking. Haruka plodded up to the pointed place getting full boots of gunk for her efforts. Grabbing something she started dragging it onto the open. After the cocoon of gum-like stretching threads tore, the something turned out to be a nude body of a short, scrawny and ugly man being dragged by his hair.

"Another swallowed victim?" asked Minako. "Is he like that Happousai?"

"Don't hurt me!" the man begged, cringing in terror. It was like he expected them to start flaying him alive.

"A swallowed victim? As if!" Haruka replied with a vengeful grin. "Down, bastard!" She kicked him down, then put her boot on his back, to prevent escape. "It's himself, in person!"

"In person? You mean it's _him_?"

A nasty air condensed when five girls lit up with battle auras as they stared at the downed sadist from above, their faces shadowed. The enemy whimpered, but this was only the beginning.

"You have to perform a field interrogation, haven't you?" the cammie-clad woman enthused joining the ring of five Senshi in civilian. She still had the knife — big, sharp — and her smile was so... impatient it made even them shudder. "Well, to learn where is he from, how to make these things go away...?" She gestured towards the ring of crystalline spires, still there. "Right...?" The eyes in the shadow of her helmet were glinting in such a way that the freak shrunk, shaking so hard he was risking to bruise himself against the asphalt.

The woman — now they could see she was barely as tall as Minako, even including the helmet, but outweighing Makoto in talents — came closer and her smile crept wider. The girls took an involuntary step back, shivering.

"Kuribayashi, belay torturing the prisoner!" an another military man ordered emerging through a door like normal people. About thirty, his face long, a stubble on his chin, his entire posture was radiating 'this is so troublesome'.

"Yes Sir," she grumbled in such a tone like he was taking away her ice-cream.

"Let the specialists handle him," he added placatingly. "Gentle and careful, like a rotten egg. Pack him for now."

Kuribayashi shivered. Such dissonance made the girls shudder as the thought that the mentioned 'specialists' were such special devils. Together with a severe elder man from the same team, the soldier woman tied the prisoner's hand behind his back.

The long faced one, meanwhile, was reporting into a crackling radio that resembled large, a squarish phone receiver: "First Lieutenant Itami reporting. The terrorist is captured, code mermaid. I repeat, captured alive, code Samson, code mermaid. The off-nominal hardware is remaining, looks inactive..."

The girls walked to where a tall, black haired woman from the same team was giving Mamoru first aid.

"Mamo-chan!" Usagi cried out when he tried to sit up but immediately slid back with a pained groan.

"Don't move!" Ami warned him hastily. "You have a broken shoulder, maybe a broken shoulder blade too!"

"Mamo-chan..." Usagi sniffed.

"We must bring him to hospital," said Ami. "I don't see anything life threatening, but... Without the Mercury computer I'm blind. I shouldn't have got used to rely on it in everything..."

"Everyone's all right there?" the elderly military man, who had helped restraining the sadist, asked with concern. "Please leave the hazardous area. Until the Sailor Senshi finish cleaning it up, it's—"

"They've finished it already!" Minako announced loudly, with a nervous laugh. "The Senshi, who aren't us of course, have already defeated the demon. Now they only have to—"

"She tried to say," Michiru interrupted her, "That the Senshi met an unexpected setback in the form of some kind of field negating their magic, and thus they had to... retreat having to keep their secret identities."

"Huh...?" Kuribayashi did not get it. "Come on, we had... Uhh... Master Sargeant...? Girls...?" She got confused seeing everyone directing 'shush' glares at her.

"Code _mermaid_ ," the lieutenant called at her, pausing his report.

The woman shut up so hastily that her teeth clicked. She then face-palmed groaning: "Yes, captain. The Sailor Senshi had retreated in unknown direction, captain."(note 1)

Someone of her comrades-in-arms, who kept emerging on the street, grumbled about 'muscles for brains'. But quietly, lest she hears.

The next moment Ranma landed next to them holding a stretcher over his head. "How's our heroic martyr?" While he did not have a very high opinion on Mamoru, he was respecting the man's determination to shield his loved one with his untrained carcass without even a hint of hesitation.

"He holds on, but his shoulder is broken," Ami briefly informed him. "Let's put him on the stretcher, carefully..."

"Let me help," Akané landed next to them, breathing heavily. Wet and disheveled, the unnatural lemon smell coming off her was

overpowering. Ranma obviously didn't spare a dish washing liquid on her.

With combined effort Mamoru was carefully moved onto the stretcher. Despite all precautions he groaned through his clenched teeth. Usagi was miling around chewing her lip and fidgeting.

Ami found, at last, a spare moment to look around for real. She gasped. "Did we ruin the street so much...?" A war zone stretched around them, the street hopelessly blocked with smashed cars, fallen lampposts and collapsed building fronts. "A car couldn't get here, we have to carry him somewhat.

"Don't worry, we have this under control," the tall military doctor reassured her. "Lift carefully." Two soldiers raised the stretcher with caution and carried it slowly away from the portal. "No, thank you, we don't need help," she refused Ranma and Akane. "We are specifically trained for carrying the wounded."

Ranma nodded in agreement.

Kuribayashi, meanwhile was studying Ranma all too intently, considering he was still dressed in only boxers. Noticing this he took a surreptitiously showy pose, half face towards her.

"What's with these mermaids, samsungs and pretend blindness?" Makoto asked Ami quietly.

"It's their way of compensating for the Achilles heel of non-magical forces," the other girl explained, also for Rei, Haruka and Michiru. I know for sure they have an order to not see us in civilian, and if they do, then never tell even their comrades. When the primary dangers are mind control and youma infiltrating the chain of command, they have to keep everything secret from their own. The commanding structure is even trickier, no one of the soldiers or officers knows their commander's face. The same is for the vast majority of the government members, I think. Everything is based on trust and hard to track informal connections, they exploited nepotism in full. I personally know our liaison, colonel Tanaka, but I cannot tell if he is really a colonel or is really Tanaka."

"It's exactly like that," the first lieutenant Itami confirmed. "So _troublesome_... By the way, are you sure that danger is over?" He cast a worried glance at the claw-like spires still surrounding them, then at the black, slightly wavering ellipse of the portal.

"I... I cannot guarantee that," Ami said feeling helpless as ever. "But we know that it's some sort of machine the enemy used but had been denied access to it for the next hundred years. I think... I think we could assume, safely enough, that it would remain passive while not receiving any further commands."

"Anyway, the Senshi wouldn't be of much help until the anti-magic zone is dispelled," Michiru noted eying critically a small hand mirror with the symbol of Neptune on its back. The talisman was dull, lifeless. Even the reflection was blurry.

"Hey!" Akane finally noticed what was happening between Kuribayashi and Ranma. "Kindly, eyes off my husband, please!" She intruded between them.

Ranma unconvincingly feigned innocence.

Kuribayashi let out a frustrated sigh. "Barely eighteen but already married...? Awww, why can't I catch—"

"So what?" Akane bristled. "Why can't two adults marry?"

"Hey!" Minako attracted their attention, her tone nervous. "It's me or the portal is becoming bigger?"

"Ah, so you noticed at last my farewell gift!" the former demon shouted out with insane glee. "Did you think you won?" He made an unexpectedly sharp motion breaking free of the soldier's hands and turning to face the girls. "What a surprise, you don't have much time left!" The soldiers grabbed him again twisting his arms tied behind his back, but he still fought to straighten up glaring at the girls with eyes that made one's hair stand on its ends. "This thingie will destabilize soon! Blam! and there's a black hole..." He started frothing. "AND IT'S ONE PLANET LESS‼！"

"Shut up." The elder master sargeant stunned him by hitting at the bastard's neck. "Umm... Not-Senshi-san, can you do somehing...? I have a wife and a son on this planet... Expecting a grandkid..."

"I..." Ami tried hopelessly to revive her dead computer. "I can't... I have no data... This portal breaks all the laws I know of... I'm sorry..." She never felt so helpless.

"Tell us how to close the portal!" Kuribayashi stormed up to the prisoner, slugging him in the mug a few times to get his attention. "Now!"

"Ha! Don't think I—"

She began beating seriously, building up a powerful rhythm. A tooth flew out. The face was becoming a tenderized steak.

Some girls turned away. Akane was smiling sweetly with deep satisfaction.

When the lieutenant reached out to stop his subordinate she stopped by herself showing restraint and calm head: "Well?"

The bastard just smiled with his broken lips: "You're out of luck. Only..." He spat an another tooth. "Only Ahs could close it. You just have to issue a command." His smile was crooked, the right side of his face too swollen, the visible eye glinting with insanity. "While having the access rights."

"Then issue that command!" Kuribayashi lifted him by his ear, glaring at him fiercely.

"As you wish, as you wish," the bastard said in mock terror. " _Ahs-three Eet Uhsuht_ ", close the return portal.

"Access denied," replied the disembodied melodic voice. "Your account is suspended, wait three billion one hundred fifty five million seven hundred fifty nine thousand five hundred three seconds and try again."

"Ahs-three Eet Uhsuht," she tried to repeat, becoming unsure. "Close the return portal."

The machine didn't deign her with reply, only the prisoner smiled mockingly.

"Close the portal, you bastard!" Ranma yelled swiveling his head trying to pinpoint the source of the voice. "Don't you care that six billion people are going to die?！"

"Bastard is not a valid subsystem name," the voice replied with the same infuriating calmness . "Your command close the portal is ubiquitous, please rephrase. Your second command is unparseable."

"Nice try," the former demon said grinning. There was fear in his eyes, mixed with some insane glee. "But Ahs is a duuumb machine. And you don't have the access rights." His features suddenly reflected confusion. "But why the hell did it answer you, then? The system should just ignore anyone except the ones marked by it..."

"Hey, you!" Ranma yelled toward the sky. "I don't care if you are dumb! Close the portal! This one I'm pointing at!"

"Please say your code phrase to validate your access rights," replied the disembodied voice.

"Ahs-three Eet Uhsuht!" yelled Ranma.

"Rejected," the voice replied. "This phrase is not your code phrase or your articulation is not clear enough."

"Ahs-three Eet Uhsuht, you bastard!" roared Ranma.

"Rejected. This phrase is not your code phrase or your articulation is not clear enough."

Ranma turned his fierce glare at the prisoner who just cackled: "Why are you looking at me? The code phrase is unique for each Ahs Lord, it's derived from your DNA when you join the ranks—"

"Then tell me _how_!" Ranma gripped his shoulders looking him right in the eyes and emitting killing intent so powerful that even the Senshi and soldiers made an involuntary step back while Kuribayashi shuddered.

"I don't know!" the former demon shrieked breaking like a twig under the sheer pressure of Ranma's killing intent. "Please don't hurt me, Master...! I honestly know nothing! If you weren't Ahs Lord already, the system wouldn't even dignify you with reply! You had probably become one!"

"How?" Ranma didn't let the pressure down. "And where is my code phrase then?"

Despite the severity of the situation, Kuribayashi couldn't help be awed with his ability.

"I don't know!" the prisoner shrieked hysterically. "I don't understand what is going on! This shouldn't be happening! Don't kill me please! We will all die soon anyway!" He started laughing hysterically, shaking and slobbering. Ranma threw him away in disgust, turning back to the portal.

The growth of the black ellipse was noticeable now. Wind was rising, dragging paper and other light trash along the street.

Ami suddenly got an idea: "Try asking the system for your code phrase!"

"Hey, you!" Ranma called at no particular direction. "Tell me my code phrase!"

"Your code phrase is Ahs-seven Tkhach'shahs Eet Suht," replied the disembodied voice.

"Ahs-seven Thacha... Tkhachchas Eet Suht!" yelled Ranma trying to outcry the rising wind. "Close this portal!"

Everyone stilled holding their breath. Please, please let this work!

"Access denied," the disembodied voice replied, quenching all hopes. "Your access level is seven but the command to open the designated portal was issued by user with access level three. You should be the user who issued the command to open the designated portal or have access level two or higher."

"That's really the end," declared the former demon, an insane smile on his lips. The portal was growing faster and faster, hurricane winds roaring and sucking in rocks, boards and other weighty trash. "We'll all die!" the instigator of this all yelled merrily, managing to rise up in spite of his hands tied behind his back. "The black hole will swallow us all!" He suddenly lost his balance and was swept by the rising wind. One moment he was here, the next moment he was gone, swallowed by the yawning black void.

The girls and the soldiers were backing away, fighting the resilient wind, dragging the stretcher with Mamoru. The black ellipse touched the sides of the street making the buildings collapse into it in avalanches of concrete. The street was becoming wider by every moment. Ruined cars were being sucked in like dry leaves, disappearing in the bottomless blackness.

"It's a black hole, right?" Usagi yelled trying to outcry the roaring wind. "Like that time on the bridge when Rubeus awakened that wand?" (note 2)

"No!" Ami screamed at her, the realization of what their leader was thinking froze the blood in her veins. "Don't! We don't know—!"

But it was too late. Usagi was standing tall, looking into the rapidly growing portal. The wind was flapping her clothing, her ponytails stretched towards the black abyss like rippling streamers.

"I'm Sailor Moon," she said in such a simple, matter-of-fact tone that the four Inners froze forgetting to breathe. "I must protect this world."

And there was light between her hands clenched against her chest.

"No! Usagi-chan!"  
"Stop!"  
"Usagi, don't...!"

Them shouting at once didn't stop her. Usagi made a step towards the abyss.

Ranma growled in impotent fury gripping his dead, unresponsive henshin wand.

"Usako‼！" Mamoru croaked in anguish trying to get up forgetting about his broken shoulder.

Usagi flared with brilliant light, then fell into the roaring abyss like a shooting star. A fraction of a second later she was gone. For a moment, nothing happened to the portal. Then it shrank tenfold. Then it expanded even more sucking nearby buildings up — the girls, caught unawares, barely held their ground. Then it shrank again...

"Alarm!" the disembodied voice noted calmly. "Destabilization of the carrier continuum! The portal will be forcibly terminated!"

"That's a good thing, right?" Minako asked Ami, her voice anxious.

"No!" the other girl groaned in despair, her clenched fists whitening. "If it collapses while she—"

The portal erupted with rays of silver light and quaked pulsing erratically... Then there was a mighty thunderclap as it shrank into a blinding point making everyone present shield their eyes. The shockwave slapped them like a whip, then a complete, ringing silence descended upon them. A dust cloud was slowly settling down where the portal once was. The silence was only disturbed by debris occasionally shifting in the ruins.

"No..." Mamoru moaned falling back to the stretcher. Merciful unconsciousness claimed him.

Everyone else looked on, stunned, crushed, disbelieving.

The soldiers bowed their heads down in silence.

The dust cloud finally dissipated revealing a flat, cleanly swept crater. There was a vague, limping shape int its middle becoming more and more solid.

Hope and relief ignited ignited the sailor suited warriors' souls with their blinding power.

"Hey guys‼ Everybody's all right?‼" Usagi yelled as she cheerfully limped towards them.

They rushed towards her surrounding her and trying to talk at once, unable to hold their joy back.

"Your are bleeding from your ears!" Ami gasped noticing the state she was in.

Truly to her word, there were thin rivulets of blood seeping out of Usagi's ears and nose. Not to mention her hair, which was totally ruined. The right odango and ponytail were simply gone, the short ruffled hair surrounding a sizable bald spot.

"Huh?‼" Usagi bellowed merrily. "Why so quiet, I can't hear you‼" She felt that something was wrong and tried to palpate her head where her hand found the sticky smear... "Ack‼ My ears are bleeding‼" She began frantically digging her pockets in search for a napkin. "I have to wipe it off or my blouse is done for‼"

With a patient sigh, Makoto tugged at Usagi's sleeve to bring her attention to the fact that half of it was missing. The ruined sleeve, as well as the big hole at the right side of her waist had very clean, if slightly wavy, edges like the blouse

was cut with something extremely sharp.

"There's no helping this blouse," stated Minako. "Hey," she turned to Ami. "Why are you shaking?"

Ami took a shuddering breath forcing her clenched fists open. She was visibly shaking. "It was a random folding of space. The volumes were split unpredictably. She could have been cut in half. Or just her face could have been sent hell knows where. Or a part of her internal organs..." She took another shuddering breath gritting her teeth in the effort to force herself to relax.

Minako looked back at Usagi's ruined clothing and hair cut flush against her head. She went green.

Luckily, Usagi couldn't hear any of that. She remembered at last about her loved one and rushed towards him wailing so loudly their comrades' ears ringed.

They followed her as one. And even Ranma failed to notice the returned paparazzi. Fearless like kamikaze and stealthy like ninja, he hid behind nearby corner. An unscrupulous carrion feeder able to sneak through any cordons, he filmed almost everything. Now he was rubbing his grabby little hands anticipating the sensation to come.

(シーンブレイク)

October 13, 2010. Translated December 30, 2010. Edited March 18, 2012. Retconned February 28, 2016. Translated February 29, 2016.

 **Ding!** Tropes unlocked:  
Turns Red  
Power Nullifier

 **Comments:**

 **1**  
An obscure quirk of Japanese language when addressing a commanding officer. See that scene in the anime these cameo guys originate from. Translators to English had a hard time with this, but as I wrote this chapter in Russian I had no trouble playing with it. I had trouble later, while translating the chapter to English.

 **2**  
Usagi as always got it wrong. That portal (the second R season of anime, I'm too lazy to remember the exact episode) wasn't a black hole. Ami just noted that it sucks everything in _like_ ·a black hole.

 **Thanks for C &C to:  
— Stealth111**


	6. More Questions than Answers

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled**

 **Chapter 6,  
More Questions than Answers.**

(シーンブレイク)

The ring of crystalline claw spires shook as it started retracting back into the ground. Then suddenly all spires at once collapsed into thin lines dispersing in glittering silvery particles quickly fading to nothingness.

Only the faraway sirens and Usagi's sniffing were disturbing the peaceful silence.

"It's time for us, the random civilians, to leave the hazardous area," Michiru urged, pulling the lost in thought Ami by the sleeve when she did not react.

"I must be with him until he awakens," Usagi said with finality in her voice as she was limping resolutely after the soldiers carrying the stretcher, with the heat of battle gone her numerous bruises making themselves known.

The girls exchanged glances.

"He had lost consciousness when the portal still existed, hadn't he?" Michiru reminded them.

To think of it, the last thing the poor savior probably remembered was his soul-mate disappearing in the black abyss. Both shivered. They wouldn't want to be him when he comes to if she's not there...

"We'll accompany her," Ranma suggested. "Unlike you all, _our_ ·presence won't even raise questions. We were passing by and decided to help."

No one even thought of arguing with Usagi, not to count the fact she was completely deaf now. Akane followed Usagi supporting her. Ranma joined them after grabbing his clothing.

"I have to investigate... To figure this out..." Ami was mumbling while trying to turn the Mercury computer on.

"Let's go." Rei started dragging her unceremoniously. "You can do that later."

"I'm sure the Senshi would contact you," were Michiru's parting words to the military people. "And... Thank you!"

"Yeah," Makoto agreed, adressing Kuribayashi. "Whithout you, it woulda ended... very badly."

"But for such skills to exist," the woman drawled incongruously as she kept undressing the receding Ranma with her eyes. "To think that ki masters aren't just a legend..."

(シーンブレイク)

It took them a long time to get to the shrine. The city was returning back to life, the state of emergency recalled, but the area around the disaster zone was still in upheaval. The wide cordon cut through many streets adding to the transport problems caused by the impromptu civilian defense center surrounded by crowds of evacuees and rows of army trucks. The whole Tokyo downtown became one huge traffic jam.

(シーンブレイク)

Greedily rubbing his grabby little hands the paparazzi sped for the studio. What a sensation! A real explosive! He'd have to copy and hide the copy as soon as possible, because moralfags will surely go apeshit.

But these dudes, both the brass and their grunts! Their so-called 'cordon'... Three times 'ha'. He gave slip to those, and these, and to this stupid Kuribayashi he'll definitely give a sli—

Kuribayashi?‼

Yelping like a wounded doe the knight of hidden camera and dirty laundry dashed desperately... Only to make the following belly-flop that much harder.

"Who do we have here traipsing around the restricted area?" the woman in green asked rhetorically as she dropped her end of a tow rope. "Oh, lookit! It's our ould acquaintance!" She pounced her frantically struggling prey to turn him face up, not forgetting to put a heavy army boot on his plump belly. "Guys! Come look whom I just caught!" Her face was like that of a cat next to a freshly evacuated jar bearing trace quantities of cream.

The paparazzun whimpered when at least a squad of soldiers emerged from the ruins to surround him in a disapproval-exuding ring.

"You're always sooo troublesome," first lieutenant Itami summed it up.

(シーンブレイク)

Michiru tried time and again to scry using her mirror but frowning more and more. Usually she preferred not to abuse the power of her artifact knowing how dangerous divinations could be. But now... "It's no use," she said with a sigh. "It couldn't look into the future anymore, there's only a gray murk. It doesn't refuse as it did in most cases before, just grows dull and lifeless."

"I see," Rei nodded in a grim agreement. "I felt that something was amiss, but could not figure what exactly. I bet my fire readings would fail as well. It's like a curse was put on us to dull our ability to—"

"Wait," Michiru interrupted her, confused. "On the contrary, looking into the _past_ ·became easier than ever."

Everybody crowded around her looking into the mirror that showed Mercury flying high above a street.

"Whoa!" Minako avowed her amazement. "How did she manage to jump that high?"

Makoto slightly shuddered looking at the glistening jets flooding the street with writhing worms and the blue-skirted warrior performing deadly acrobatics above.

"So quick," Ami said quietly as she approached from behind, unnoticed. "Back then it felt like an eternity..."

She didn't even finish saying that when the other girls winced in sympathy: Mercury in the mirror slammed onto the ice jerking like a rubber doll then sliding away from the view.

"Ouch," commented Minako.

(シーンブレイク)

"Watch your tongue," Kuribayashi advised her comrade-in-arms with exaggerated friendliness. "Don't start here about my orientation, yeah! Or else."

He was ready to take his words back, swallow them, live them down - anything! Because the fists of the busty and muscled Sergeant First Class were itching almost in the visible spectrum.

"Haven't you admitted it yourself?" the elderly Kuwahara reminded her quickly.

"But they are both the same person!" Kuribayashi replied, immediately calming down: the 'demon sergeant' was loved and respected by everyone in the team. "It's obvious! They move the same, their figures are, er, the same, considering... Moreover, these were same boxers! I got no idea how he changes genders and why it wasn't dispelled with everything else, but only blind wouldn't notice that that red-haired Senshi is that guy."

Now, after she pointed out the obvious, everyone suddenly felt their vision clear. The reactions ranged from "it's good _I_ ·don't have to turn into a girl to fight" to "Nooo, why was I staring at his/her tits! Brain bleach, now!".

"And they admitted openly that they are married," Kuribayashi added, as if that meant something at the end of the twentieth century.

"It's a good thing I have to be silent about this," most men thought. "Forget, forget the nightmare!"

"I have an acquaintance who likes such plots," First Lieutenant Itami thought. "He'll be... Aw shucks, I'm under a non-disclosure agreement. This is sooo bothersome!"

(シーンブレイク)

〈 _What if Kuribayashi wasn't there to catch him? That cut timeline is planned to be published later as an AU side-story_ 〉

(シーンブレイク)

"What did you expect from the spawn of evil?" Rei was ranting. "We have to be ready for any, even the most imaginable, underhanded ploys to preempt the enemy from taking action."

"So that we won't have to choose between the bad and the worse," Haruka was echoing ominously. "For example, between the lives of hostages and the lives of everyone in the city."

"I know, I know," grumbled Minako. "I was Sailor V, did you forget? It's just that... I can't stand the sight of such villainy no matter how many times I see it."

"So, do we know anything concerning today's enemy?" Michiru inttruded on the conversation breaking a third squabble. "Alas, my mirror is blind here."

"Our transformations are working again," Ami said, finally beginning to react to outside stimuli. "My computer as well. But there is a blind spot at the place we fought, any sensors glitch." She breathed out a frustrated sigh, slumping. "Either that strange Ahs system is overwhelmingly powerful, or there is contamination with alien continuum in which our magic doesn't make physical sense."

"So we still know nothing," Makoto summed grimly. "What do we do?"

"Wait for the next attack and when it happens try to learn more?" Rei suggested no less grimly, just to kill the silence.

"We barely escaped this one!" exclaimed Minako who felt sick just thinking about another such demon.

"First, we have to stop breathing down Ami's neck," suggested Michiru. "Then investigate the battlefield... Gather samples, sweep it with our mystic senses." She cast a meaningful glance at Rei. "Try to learn if the military would be able to dig something up."

"Wait until Setsuna crawls out of her lair," added Haruka. "She, of all people, should have clues even if vague."

This moment Ranma and Akané entered the room followed by Usagi. The blond's eyes were red and puffy, the napkin at its limit. There was a wide-brimmed fedora on her head, pulled down to the ears.

"Usagi-chan!" Makoto gasped. "What happened to you?"

"First she had been crying over Mamoru," Ranma said tactlessly, counting. "Then she's been crying in joy when he woke up, then crying when she learned what happened to her hair—"

"Ranma!" hissed Akané inflicting a Megaton Elbow Jab that made his ribs creak in protest.

"Well, how is he? Awake?" impatiently asked Minako.

Usagi finished her napkin off sounding like a charging elephant. Then she made an apologetic face pointing at her ear.

"He's awake and well," Akané replied instead while handing Usagi a new one. "Everything will be all right, he had a simple fracture in his forearm... And here we were afraid his shoulder blade could be broken."

"Isn't it long overdue for her to transform?" asked Ranma. "It's a bit hard to talk like this."

Usagi just stared at him with doe eyes.

Rei mimicked grabbing something on her breast then raising her hand up.

Usagi blink-blinked staring at her.

"Oh, for the..." Rei took the blonde's hand moving it over the brooch the other girl wore.

Usagi blink-blinked again. Rei's eye twitched.

Michiru patiently, with slow calming motions, produced her henshin rod pointing at it. Then she pointed at Usagi's brooch. Then at her henshin rod again.

Usagi's face lit as that proverbial light bulb thingie shone at her. A deafening shout and a blinding flash later, Sailor Moon stood in her place. With the fedora gone it became obvious that her hairdo was still ruined.

"She got it at last," quipped Rei.

Sailor Moon suddenly started twitching. Then she yelled "Ack! It's itching!" and plunged her little fingers into her ears trying to scratch in there. The itch was, probably, truly unbearable as she started dancing in place, twisting around. Finally, she lost her balance and crashed down unable to arrest the fall with her hands as the little fingers were firmly stuck in her ears. Luckily, the only loss was the low table that broke under her weight.

"Are you all right, Sailor Moon?" Makoto asked her while helping her to her feet. "We worried so much when we saw you turned deaf..."

"Aw, that was nothing," Sailor Moon waved her concern off. "It's just busted ears. It healed all right, didn't it?"

Haruka snorted with barely suppressed laugh, earning a dirty glare from Rei.

"Let us transform and teleport to the base for debriefing," Ranma urged. "While there's stil anything left of the Sunday."

"Yeah, because tomorrow it's either work or college," Makoto added.

"The school years passed by like a dream." Minako sighed dramatically. "Who could have thought?"

(シーンブレイク)

Taking each other's hands the Senshi teleported underground. The round concrete tunnel was noticeably wider than that of the subway, its bottom a flat concrete floor. The far ends were drowning in darkness and the numbing breath of hundreds seals that blocked mystical sensing. The brightly lit disembarking point, with a big red cross in its center and a thick black and yellow striped line surrounding it, was like an island of light. On the edge of perception, a metallic donut was glinting, the portal device remaining from the Jadeite war a year ago.

No one of them, besides Moon and Mercury, knew even what was outside of this hall, even less which way was out. This paranoid secrecy that was justified considering how clever that enemy proved to be, prone to make his youma possess humans or just disguising them as ones. He kept infiltrating even the most protected of organizations.

Mercury activated her communicator, like everyone's disguised as a wrist-watch: "This is Sa— Yes, in full... To be exact, everyone who participated in the battle... Yes... Really...? Glad to hear that, thank you!" She snapped the clockface cover shut. "A good news, girls: they caught that paparazzi!"

"What a relief!" Iris was sincerely glad, relaxing visibly. "Now half the country won't see me in obscene state!"

"Yeah," Sol grounded her. "Only half the science division wo'd be studying that tape."

"On whose," Iris tried to kick the redhead, but the other girl dodged easily, "side are you, parasite?"

"Weeeell..." Sol scratched the back of her head. "I, uh, long learned to shrug it off. Like Shampoo does. They saw? So what, let them be jealous."

"You too?" Venus said with unhealthy enthusiasm.

"I am surrounded by exhibitionists," Iris grumbled halfheartedly.

"But that's nothing," Venus continued. "It would be much worse if our parents learned..."

"Giku!" eeped Moon at the sound of the scary word 'parents'. In her mind's eye the fire-breathing mom loomed like Godzilla.

"You are an adult," Mars berated her. "A legal one. Grow up, will you?"

"It's easy for you to tell," Moon whined. "You won't have to explain a sudden bald spot. What should I say to my mom...?"

"Shouldn't her hair have grown back already?" Sol wondered. Which promptly brought a Megaton Elbow Jab unto her ribs.

Sailor Moon raised her hand feeling around the bald spot that took the place of her right odango. She sighed. "There is probably something wrong with my powers," she said dejectedly. "I'll have to find new determination... Or even meditate under a waterfall," she joked half-heartedly.

"You are right about the determination," Mars agreed with her. "There's no one else whose powers would depend on their self-confidence so much. But enough. We still hadn't—"

"Tell them you've been in a spa," Sol interjected, "and a hair dryer exploded, the big kind they lower onto your head. To be believable, the lie have to be outrageous."

"Won't do," Iris scraped her idea. "I would, in place of her mom, rush to pull compensation out of that spa with teeth and nails - and it's blown. No, better tell them you were passing by our old school while the headmaster had another relapse."

"A relapse?" Moon asked, confused.

"Well, he tries to enforce standard haircuts in the school from time to time," Sol explained. "In such periods he is prone to jumping at people with shears." She covered her pigtail by reflex. "The bugger leaps high, aims like a hawk and shaves with both hands."

"If that loon even thinks of defending himself, no one would believe him anyway," Iris added. "Just remember, high school Furinkan. Fu-rin-kan, it's in Nerima. How you got there, invent that yourself."

"I'll try," Moon said with a sigh. "Thank you."

"Parents learning is not the end of the world," added Iris. "But if Nabiki-neechan did, she'd try to profit from it. And get herself into a very bad mess."

A bright rectangle of a door opened in the end opposite to the portal. Then, with a click, fluorescent lights began flickering to life under the rounded ceiling, bringing out a projection screen on one wall and a tidy row of ten office chairs.

Two familiar people entered the hall: Colonel Tanaka, a short, graying veteran with a buzz-cut, wrinkles around his eyes and a hard brush of a moustache. He was accompanied by the Lieutenant managing to carry four chairs on top of a clipboard. He barely managed to restrain expression of displeasure at seeing only nine guests there.

After a brief greeting, everyone put the chairs in a half-circle to sit down: this debriefing was far from the first.

Iris was watching Sol like a hawk - a skew eyed one as they sat side by side - but the redhead sat primly, her knees firmly together. How unlike Ranma.

Mercury was customarily the first one to come forward: "I will begin from the civilian losses. Two confirmed, both men. At least one unconfirmed, from the words of the enemy and material evidence that may have been destroyed during the battle. Before it began, beside the attacked bus with children, there were two torn open cars and one shoe. Among the police, two confirmed killed, with one body most probably destroyed. There is a high probability that while I was unconscious those who had been coming to my aid were killed. Maybe the survivor, Nakahara Yuki, could fill this blank, but she suffered severe psychological damage."

The Senshi shifted awkwardly in their seats, Venus grumbling something about ignobility. The Lieutenant was taking notes.

"Now for the enemy," Mercury continued in a business tone, not letting emotions show in her voice. "Firstly, it was not a mage nor demon, but a man posing as demon using unknown technology. His goal was... entertainment, no hint of greater goals nor bosses directing him. Based on known facts, this attack looks like a personal initiative of a single sadist. Unfortunately, we failed to keep the prisoner as he was sucked in by his own uncontrollable portal and was, most probably, killed."

The girls did not react, knowing this already, but the Colonel frowned.

"Secondly," Mecrury continued, "The enemy was a user of an unknown system, Ahs, the source of all his abilities. The bad news: I've never read of anything even remotely similar, even in the archives of the... progenitor civilization. It's not even clear if this system is magitech or purely technological. The system posesses a voice interface and a very limited intelligence, the briefly mentioned figures of its power output are disturbing. It's two hundred thirteen Petawatts."

"It's approximately fifty Megatons per second," the Lieutenant calculated quickly.

 _Now_ ·the girls felt the scale. Compared to this, even Sol's dangerous forbidden technique looked pale!

"How did we beat such a thing," Venus squeaked.

"We didn't," Sol said. "He offed himself by biting more that he could chew and going over his, howzit, quota."

"You are not entirely correct," Mercury corrected. "In the very end the enemy was trying to 'close connection', whatever that means, but there was some sort of error in the Ahs system that led to it refusing his commands. The very fact of errors in a system manipulating such energies is disturbing."

"It can go jam itself for all I care!" Sol injected. "And you forgot to mention the most important thing, this crap killing our magic!"

"I will now adress the most important aspect," Mercury continued. "Due to unknown yet reason, the Ahs system had a crushing advantage over us. Our abilities weren't overwhelmed by a kindred force, like that one time, but in fact shut down. The cause may be either a crushing technological advantage of the civilization that created the system, or simply unforeseen side effects due to conflicting cosmologies. Sadly I have to admit this was not the enemy we can fight. We were brought down to civilians."

"We are greatly grateful to you!" Iris added standing up and making a formal bow. "Without the help of your soldiers, firstly Kuribayashi-san, we would have perished."

"But how did you manage to... shut down the portal that threatened the existence of Earth?" the Colonel inquired in such voice like he was talking about minor trouble.

"Only thanks to the... powers of sailor Moon," Mercury replied dodging the question.

"But weren't you in civilian at the time?" the Lieutenant inquired. "By the way, the event itself was caught on tape confiscated from one... _looter_. Let's watch it."

A projector on the ceiling turned on casting a blue rectangle on the projection screen. Iris tensed, preparing to see herself in the buff. But the shaking and blurry picture started from the black ellipse of the portal, fully clothed girls backing away from the all-devouring abyss together with soldiers. There was no sound, only the roar of wind in the microphone. When the culmination came, there were only blurred streaks on the screen. There were white strips running down as the camera struggled to keep the magnetic heads drum on track, not designed for such stresses. Then there was a bright flash, and a clear, if a bit shaky, picture of settling dust clouds. Sounds emerged, rustling and crackling of settling debris.

Mercury suppressed a sigh of relief: the most important secret - the fact of the Silver Crystal existence - was reliably blurred out.

A thin, limping figure emerged from the clouds of dust.

"Hey, that's me!" Sailor Moon exclaimed grossly violating conspiration as she pointed at the joyful and bloodied face of her civilian form. Ami's strained voice could be heard clearly enough: "..was a random folding of space. The volumes were split unpredictably. She could've been cut in half. Or just her face could've been sent hell knows where. Or a part of her internal organs..."

Sailor Moon paled. _That_ , she didn't hear, being completely deaf at the time. She involuntarily touched the bald spot where her hair was cut flush to the skin, and the meaning of those words sank fully. Her imagination painted several graphic, detailed pictures. She felt ill, nauseated.

"What we just observed," Mercury said, careful with her wording, when the clip ended, "was an unpredictable reaction between the... special powers of Sailor Moon and whatever was controlling the portal. In other words, we were fabulously lucky. A system we do not understand interacted with... special magic we barely understand in such a way that we all survived. Unknown by unknown resulted in a plus."

"But it's really simple," Sailor Moon disagreed, confused. "You make a wish, with all your heart, betting your life on it. If your magic reserve is enough, everything is fine. If not... We were lucky back then, our first time. It think I was already technically dead while making that last wish that brought us back to life."

"It's all usage details," Mercury snapped, irate at her leader spewing secrets. "But it is in fact heritage of a supercivilization so far ahead of Earth that their technology is absolutely indistinguishable from magic to us."

"You mean," the Colonel asked, "we made contact with _yet another_ ·supercivilization, currently existing, whose tech is working on different principles?"

"In fact, yes," Mercury admitted. "It's safer to consider the current existence of that new supercivilization as unconfirmed, the Ahs system may be a barely understood heritage like our magic. But if not... Something alien had put roots in our world, the anomaly at the site of battle is stable. Considering the scale of powers wielded by, in fact, a small hater, the prognosis is unfavorable. I will help with whatever I can, but you can scratch us out as a combat force. It's not the enemy our powers are designed against. In the end, only two ki-masters of us remained battle-worthy, and only because the enemy forgot to suppress ki as well... I advice to either lower the secrecy or call upon the main body of JSDF independently of ETERT."

"I understand," the Colonel was grim.

"Could the knowledge..." Moon cast a side glance at him, "..of the ancestors help? It survived, right?"

"First, I do not have access to many things," Mercury retorted acidly. "As well as the owners of the planetary castles themselves. Only you can grant it, _after_ ·you are officially crowned... No, I said _officially_. I know that your and Tuxedo Kamen's magic counted that time as accession. That was first. Second, I simply can't understand most of what's available."

The girls stared at her in confusion, all but Sol and Neptune who had rich experience of practical application of things the true nature of which they didn't know.

"I'm not _that_ ·genius," Mercury explained self-consciously. "I can't make a thousand year leap across the abys separating the science of..." She glanced at the military men, "..the Atlanteans from the modern earth science. Finding superficious practical applications," She pointed at the portal 'donut' with her arm, "was relatively easy. But don't ask me to explain, figuratively, how my boomstick is throwing lighting... I dechipher that knowledge based on the Earth science. I can accelerate its evolution tenfold, but..." She exchanged glances with the Colonel, "That is fraught with all kinds of apes with greanades emerging. Or worse, scientists digging too deep like those dwarves. The live example is Tomoe Soichiro who was studying interdimensional physics but summoned daimohns of Pharaoh Ninety."

"Tomoe. Wasn't he," the Colonel asked, "one of the founders of the Infinity academy that _suddenly_ ·blew up in ninety two?"

"It was him," confirmed mercury. "He opened a way for the servants of a Great Old One on whom we _barely_ ·managed to slam the door shut. If you need to compare notes, the cultists called themselves Witches Five, their cannon fodder were daimohns, mostly possessing non-living things."

"That 'cannon fodder' almost did us in," Mars added. "We couldn't beat them three on one, not to mention near-instant regeneration."

"Yeah, we had to grow fast," Moon noted with melancholy.

"However, your usage the terms of Lovecraft," the Colonel noted, "isn't very... reassuring."

"It was the closest analog." Mercury shrugged. "And third. If we consider the source of our magic, it were entities so far ahead of us they are indistinguishable from gods. See for yourself: all sapient races in the galaxy are outwardly indistignuishable from Earth humans... Were, until Galaxia destroyed them last year. All civilizations in the galaxy were guarded by Senshi whose magic is kindred to ours. People have souls. All three on this list couldn't have emerged naturally."

"And again we hit myth and legend," the Colonel concluded dryly. "Or data beyond our understanding."

"Yes," Mercury agreed. "I propose to end this meeting unless we started going in circles."

The girls began gathering in a circle on the teleport ground.

"You go," Mercury told them. "I'll sit here, try using... parts of the portal as a scanner. Maybe I figure it out."

(シーンブレイク)

Black lightning kept striking from the dark sky filled with a nauseatingly-lilac aurora. In return, shining points of torn out star seeds kept floating up all over the city signifying the human lives cut short.

Iris was fast, inhumanly fast. She easily dodged the slow and sluggish, from her perspective, double charges of golden energy. It was probably only thanks to her that the four Inners were still alive, their Star Seeds not added to Sailor Galaxia's collection.

And yet she felt so powerless! Nothing, _nothing!_ ·could even scratch this juggernaut, this unstoppable force in a golden sailor fuku. Surely not the best technique of Iris that was practically a blast of air, all pretty and sparkling but against a real enemy doing no better than Ranma's 'Tiger Domineering' or Ryouga's 'Lion Roar Blast'.

She felt a faint hope when the Starlights — who should have been long dead, so beaten up they were — gained their twenty-second breath putting all their power into an awesome combined strike.

Galaxia was thrown back. Galaxia bled. And then... Then she smiled, her smile making Iris' hair to stand on its ends, and proved that she had been holding back up to that moment. She went scything through the city, bringing whole buildings down with one blow.

All the while the black lightning kept striking from the nauseatingly-lilac darkness. And the shining dots kept floating up over the city. Iris desperately, against all reason, kept hoping that the dojou withstood this, that the people precious to her were all right.

But then Sol returned in a flash of teleport, her face darkened from grief. Iris understood it without any words. They hadn't been spared. They didn't have a family anymore &mdash except each other. Except their friends. And their Princess.

But even that they would have only if they could win, could defeat the immeasurably strong enemy, the invincible enemy against whom Sol's strongest techniques were useless.

Akane jerked awake gulping for air. Ranma cuddled up to her shifted. It was several months since she last dreamed of that nightmarish battle. Why today? The sky beyond the windows was dark, the coming dawn not yet visible against the street lights.

Sighing she got up to get ready for work. At least there was no reason to hurry now. Then, her daily battle with bad habits dying hard: cooking breakfast.

(シーンブレイク)

"Ma, what would you do in case of an alien invasion?" Minako asked incongruously, deep in dark thoughts about the unknown supercivilization. "In a purely hypothetical sense?"

"Eat up and get out! You'll be late for your training session...! Ya mind-screw in a skirt. Just you try getting knocked up instead of becoming a sports star! I'd strangle you with my own hands!"

(シーンブレイク)

"What a murk," Rei grumbled as she wiped sweat-soaked hair from her forehead. "Well, at least it was not a prophetic dream but a simple, cozy nightmare about being roasted alive..."

(シーンブレイク)

Only Usagi was sleeping soundly, overslept and barely got there in time for her housekeeping courses. Her cooking was, slowly but inexorably, becoming edible.

(シーンブレイク)

The light of rising sun was falling at a sharp angle on the broken ruin of a city block turning it into a labyrinth of warm shine and deep shadows. Whole sections all but disappeared in the shadow of buildings still standing. The dawn light made highly visible the dust covering the machines and people bustling around clad in coveralls and construction helmets. The floodlights that kept the scene lit for the entire night went dim not lighting anything as they were unable to compete against the life-giving luminary.

"This way, please." An engineer lead a couple of military officers through the controlled chaos as emergency workers continued clearing the ruins all around them. Jackhammers roared, construction vehicles crawled around flashing their annoyingly beeping strobe beacons. Beyond the foundations left of the first row of buildings there was a second row, damaged irreparably but still standing thanks to the huge reserves granted by seismic-resistant construction. The siding was torn away, naked concrete walls gaping with wide cracks and an occasional breech. There were some unrecognizable remains hanging down from the naked window apertures, sometimes there was a mangled mess of internal walls sticking out. Colonel Tanaka was glad his countrymen were so disciplined, used to earthquake evacuations. If this happened in America, such a devastation would be accompanied with a corresponding death-toll.

They passed the second row of buildings and found themselves in a narrow dead end littered with small debris and broken glass but relatively passable even for a car.

"It's here, the engineer said pulling up a plastic tape to let them pass. The tape surrounded a spot near a wall. "We didn't touch anything... Well, not after we understood what we were dealing with. We just moved aside the trash covering the... object." He pointed at a torn mattress laying aside.

One glance was enough for the colonel to recognize the said 'object'. He saw it once before, though it wasn't charred and partly melted back then.

"Thank you, we appreciate your help," he said to the engineer showing no outward sign that his heart fell. "Could you please bring someone with a jackhammer? We'd like to extract the object applying as little direct force as possible.

"Of course, I'll send someone right away!" The engineer ran away to give orders leaving two military officers alone with the find.

"Colonel, it's not the...?" The young lieutenant, a participant of the recent battle for Tokyo asked with a wain hope.

"I'm afraid it is," Tanaka replied grimly as he walked around surveying the partly melted staff thrust into asphalt with such a force it buried itself halfway into the ground, surrounded by a web of cracks. "There could be no mistake, here's a heart-shaped ring at the top. Everything matches." He recognized one of the dark spots as charred remains of flesh and became even more grim. "I'm afraid, lieutenant, our heroic girls suffered their first loss..."

(シーンブレイク)

〈 _What if their 'luck' caused no one other than Ami's mother to be called in as an expert? A second side-story is planned here._ 〉

(シーンブレイク)

After they teleported again into the underground hall, the Senshi's faces grew grim as their eyes fell on the partly melted but still recognizable staff laying on an examination table. Mercury wasn't showing her face, working bent over a web of wires connecting the half-gutted portal "donut" with a pile of computers.

Sailor Moon's partly bald head was covered with a yellow-black bandana tied askew like a kerchief. She took up the heavy, runny piece of metal. There was no Garnet orb in what remained of the staff's heart-shaped top. A great sadness appeared in the Senshi leader's features.

"This is—" she began.

"Yes, these are charred remains of skin from her palms," Mercury affirmed still hiding her face in the contraption. "The DNA matches too, the remains of it they could find."

"So we lost a comrade in arms," Sailor Moon said firmly but with a deep sadness. "She probably died fighting to the end. And we didn't even know..."

"Setsuna-mama," Saturn whispered quietly. She didn't make a whimper, the bitter tears rolled down silently.

Iris lowered her gaze, unable to look at anyone. She reddened in shame remembering herself vehemently badmouthing Pluto. Maybe the same moment as the woman...

"I ain't buying it." Sol declared with grim determination. "And won't allow myself to believe until I see the dead body with my own eyes." The girls lifted their eyes at her, the mournful silence broken. "Until proven otherwise, I'll consider her alive... somewhere, in need of our help," she finished with conviction.

Now all eyes turned to Mercury: she was the only one who could've... But the blue haired girl just shook her head. "The staff was found in ruins near the former enemy portal," she told them quietly as she turned towards the screens. "But that zone... It's impossible to analyze." She clenched her fists, bent over the table. Her entire pose radiated frustration. "The contemporary technologies aren't even close to what I need, and the magi-tech..." She pressed a couple keys and a ceiling-mounted projector lit up projecting a map onto a wall-mounted screen. It was a strange weave of color curls and lines with a Juuban map superimposed over it. In the center, the weave broke, distorting in a slow rippling until the colors bled together into a featureless gray spot of roughly circular shape. Mercury pressed another key. The color weave was replaced with a complex network of scintillating green and blue lines. In the center the lines distorted, vibrating and jumping around randomly, repulsed by the same spot now filled with black and white static. Mercury switched the picture a couple more times but the abnormal spot stayed in the same place, only changing its appearance. "As you could see, there's a hole there," she explained with a sigh. "The properties of our world undergone a change so drastic that all magic known to us simply ceases to have sense there. It's impossible to examine using the means at hand."

"Including my mirror, alas," added Neptune.

"Also, it's impossible to teleport there," added Sol. "You just couldn't see into there... Well, you know what I am talking about. That inner eye stuff turns blind. When you try to enter the damn place on foot, your transformation just reverts. And not in a good way... Well, enough to say I had to rob a clothing store using my invisibility technique."

"Idiot!" Iris slapped her upside the head. "Why haven't you warned us? What if something happened to you?"

"What do you mean, rob a clothing store?" Jupiter asked, confused.

"Does that mean the ki techniques work there?" Mercury asked, her interest piqued. She was ready to jump at any lead.

"Well, your seifuku disappears," Sol explained shivering uncomfortably. "Well... and that's all. Don't go there unless you are in civilian."

"Oh!" Jupiter gasped.

"That was one of my favorite shirts," Sol added grumpily. "And now it's lost in some astral dump or another. About the the ki techniques... They work, but not for long. Your ki just..." She fell silent searching for an appropriate word. "Well, it kind of dims, like your battery is dying or something. The longer you loiter near the center... It's harder and harder to use it, like something is numbing your spirit. I almost broke my leg simply jumping down from a lamppost. Ah, and the Jusenkyou doesn't work either. You stay in which form you enter, no matter how much water..."

"Idiot‼！" Iris hit her so hard that she got embedded into the concrete floor, with a spiderweb of cracks and everything. "What if it killed you! What if you got stuck mid-transformation, like some futanari‼！"

Sol's face went blue from the belated horror.

"Please stop!" Mercury exclaimed. "Many of these machines are very fragile, they could fail from such shocks!"

The pile of computers emitted a loud, urgent beeping. Mercury turned to it immediately forgetting about the two.

"Seems like you broke it," Sol whispered towards Iris, her voice smug.

"You won't get off that easily!" the other girl hissed keeping her voice low.

The sound of Mercury's rapid tapping ceased, the image on the wall switched to a world map with two blinking red spots, one in Tokyo and another one directly above it, somewhere in Siberia.

"Don't tell me there's another one!" Uranus exclaimed as she instantly caught the meaning.

"Sorry, but there is," Mercury confirmed tensely, her eyes firmly on the screens. "A second zone has formed just now... Or, more precisely, two to fourteen minutes ago... It's approximately three thousand kilometers directly to the north." The computers had a fit of frantic beeping. She added, with alarm: "And the density of that zone is rising rapidly!"

"A new enemy, then!" Uranus slammed her fist into the palm of her hand, her expression grim and determined.

"An another freak like that one?" Venus shuddered in revulsion.

"Let's scout what is happening there," Sol began fretting.

"Then... we go all together?" Moon suggested without any enthusiasm. "And here I promised my parents I'll be right back..."

"Umm... It's not necessarily an enemy," Mercury tried to warn them. "We don't know who else is listed as 'users' of that Ahs system. There's always a possibility of a friendly contact."

"What do you suggest?" Sol pierced the other girl with an intense stare.

"Let's scout stealthily first," Mercury replied. "In a small force. And only— Ack!"

Not even letting her finish Sol grabbed her and both disappeared in a flash as she shouted "Solar Teleport!"

"Idiot!" Iris growled towards the empty place. "You can't scare people like that!"

(シーンブレイク)

October 2010 — March 2012 — April 2016

(シーンブレイク)

(シーンブレイク)

(シーンブレイク)

 **ATTENTION: For those who reads this fic for the second time after the retcon of April 2016: from this point on, there are no changes except joining chapters together and correcting small facts to fit the new beginning. You may proceed with the sequel.**

(シーンブレイク)

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— Crescent Pulsar R  
— Orphus users (30 bugs so far)  
— Stealth111


	7. Irresistible Force

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled**

 **Chapter 7,  
Irresistible Force.**

(シーンブレイク)

Sol and Mercury took battle stances immediately as they teleported to the place. All Sol could "see" before teleporting was a blurry image of some mountain ridge. The mental images of the destination point were blurry and unreliable. They teleported almost blindly appearing on one of the mountaintops.

Sol took a good look around. "Are we still on Earth?"

The surrounding landscape was completely lifeless. Mountain ranges stretched from the West to the East, the bulks of dark stone devoid of even a sign of vegetation. Only the snow covering the tops and stretching down the slopes in wide stripes made the picture less monotonous.

Sol shivered. It wasn't the cold: she, as a Senshi, felt comfortable even in the vacuum of outer space. She could probably sleep burrowed in the snow like a polar bear. No, it was the air of empty, hopeless loneliness hanging over these mountains that made her feel ill at ease.

Mercury concentrated her efforts on the readings of her computer. Left with the task of guarding them both, Sol was looking around time and again but all she could feel was the ever-present background noise of bacteria inhabiting the top layer of the Earth crust. There was no one for many kilometers around.

"Let's move over there." Mercury pointed at the adjacent ridge as she closed her computer. The distance was small, just a kilometer, so they ran jumping from rock to rock, to save Sol's energy.

"What's with this land?" Sol asked, confused. The forty kph they ran at was a light walk for her, not an obstacle for babbling away. "Me and pops saw lots of wilderness, but I can't remember anything like this."

"It's the most.. uninhabited part.. of Siberia.." Mercury replied between breathes. "It was charted.. only in the thirties.. the coldest winters.. of Northern hemisphere.." She fell silent for a moment as she made a huge jump. "Human cannot.. survive here.." One more huge jump. "Communists build.. their convict colonies.. here... Wait a moment..."

They reached the designated point and Mercury dove back into her scanning. The view here was exactly like the one from the previous ridge: many such ridges stretching parallel to each other, similar like twins.

Sol sighed. "Well, at least there are no bystanders here, we could fight without holding back if we have to..."

"Here it is!" Mercury interrupted her. "Two point eight kilometers to the West."

They ran again, along the ridge top, now slower, carefully choosing their way to stay hidden behind the folds of the landscape. Five minutes later they cautiously peeked from a rocky cover, staring at an alien artifact of severely monolithic proportions. A huge, sharp pointed black pyramid a good third of Tokyo Tower in height loomed there inertly showing no signs of activity as it stood in the middle of the rocky slope.

"What the heck is that thing?" Sol muttered looking over the ominous monument that had no right of being here.

"I don't know," replied Mercury. "Just like the zone in Tokyo it denies any attempts to scan it. This pyramid is a blind spot for all sensors, I know no more than my eyes could tell me."

Sol felt it too. She could perceive the pyramid with her eyes only. All her Senshi senses perceived an indistinct murk in its place. Truly a blind spot.

"So we know where it is, but don't know what it is," Mercury summed up as she frowned closing her computer. "I'm afraid the best strategy in this case would be waiting until the unknown makes the first move. We have no other options than to rely on blind luck."

"Let's bring everyone else then," suggested Sol. "To blast at it all at once if we have to fight."

"I don't know." Mercury frowned. "Here, at our current distance, it's safe. But if it suddenly starts to expand the zone, only you and Iris would stay battle-worthy. The rest of us risk to be left completely unprotected against this sub-zero environment, a thousand kilometers away from the human dwellings. That would be a very stupid death.

"We'll just grab winter clothing, then." Sol refused to back off. "After all, we whacked that freak with our magic nicely in the beginning. But this time Sailor Moon and Saturn will be with us from the start. I can... unleash too."

In the end they agreed that Mercury stays to watch while Sol teleports back. She ran to hide behind the adjacent ridge, to avoid alerting a potential enemy with the flash.

Then she received a brutal beating from Iris for leaving Mercury alone without cover. Despite the toughness of her ki-reinforced body and her magic armor, she got an impressive shiner from the rainbow Senshi.

Sailor Moon was quick to stop the beating, mostly out of worry that Iris inadvertently damages some important scientific thingy. However saddened she was by fights between the Saotome couple, meddling in their family matters felt... wrong somehow. Sailor Moon trusted her intuition.

They hastily contacted Mercury, making sure she was all right. They continued watching her trying to keep talking to the reluctantly replying girl engrossed in her scanning.

Minutes stretched on, nothing was happening. Gradually everyone relaxed. There was no pressing need to teleport there as there were no clearly discernible signs of an identifiable enemy.

"That's weird." Mercury's voice was barely audible, as she was talking to herself deep in thought.

Only Sol heard her, immediately asking with worry: "What is it? Something is happening there?"

"I... I don't know." Mecrury was almost growling in frustration. "Parameters and patterns are flowing. Rhythms are changing... Maybe something is really happening. Maybe it's just a background noise normal for the passive state of this... unknown and this zone will stay inert for the next thousand years. I just don't know!"

"I'm going there," Sol proclaimed flatly. "To cover you while you are distracted. So it won't end like that time," she reminded tactlessly.

"We too!" Sailor Moon proclaimed. "We stand for each other. And we will met this unknown together."

"I don't think the pyramid will stay inert," added Neptune. "My gift may be blinded but one doesn't need to be a diviner to understand this: it didn't just appear. It was summoned by someone."

"I hope it's not that," Sol presaged grimly, "our world attracted attention of another _gourmet_."

Venus shuddered.

"It's decided then!" Sailor Moon declared in a commanding voice. "We are going all together! We'll keep watch there until that another one reveals himself or it works out somehow. I'll just," her voice lost all its conviction, "call my parents."

"Let's grab some winter clothing and other supplies," injected Sol. "What if they dispel us again? Dying naked in the snowy wilderness isn't on my plans."

Their lack of optimism wasn't helped by that possibility.

(シーンブレイク)

With exception of the bedridden Mamoru and the MIA Pluto all the ten remaining protectors of the solar system miled behind a rock outcropping a few hundred meters down the slope from the pyramid. From time to time one or another of them stuck her head out to look at the alien monument as they twisted in the wind.

Sailor Moon was freezing, the only one of them. Mars tried to explain it to her that the cold she felt was a pure autosuggestion. But Moon, it seems, got it in her head too firmly that she _had_ ·to be freezing when staying in a mini-skirt amidst the Siberian snows. The counter-antisuggestion wasn't working.

Venus sat on the of winter clothing piled at the base of a jutting rock outcropping. She wore grim expression uncharacteristic of her. Shaking herself up, she stared at the snow-covered vale and the mountains across it. She found no consolation here either: this arctic landscape reminded too sharply of their death at the North pole.

The Outers, especially Uranus, weren't any merrier. In their previous fight against a supposedly hentai demon, Hotaru met their decision to leave her back home with understanding. But this time, she flatly refused. The loss of Setsuna weighing heavily upon her spirit, she showed an uncharacteristic stubbornness telling them she decided to always stay at her parents side. Even in death. Such a phrasing didn't improve the mood of the said parents at all.

Sol and Iris were lazily warming up. Which meant they were wiping the rocky slope with each other just once a minute, trying not to cause landslides.

Mercury continued scanning quietly, alert to any minute changes, with Jupiter silently envious of her having something to do.

Time stretched on and on, mind-numbingly monotonous.

"A second blind spot budding off!" Mercury exclaimed making everyone startle. Alerted, they felt their powers slightly waning and their supernatural senses numbing.

They rushed to look at the pyramid. There was a small figure clad in what looked like a medieval knight armor bobbing several meters above the ground. It was held aloft by two jerky plasma jets originating from the ends of thin rods protruding from the figure's back. The pyramid now shone with a newly formed entranceway arch.

The Senshi stared at him with rising anxiousness.

At the closer inspection it became apparent that the strange knight wasn't human. His legs were too short and his arms too long. In stature he was probably shorter than even Sol. His rounded armor but looked similar to the medieval Maximillian suits: there was a complex system of overlapping plates of perfect mirror forming a completely closed, smooth surface with not a slightest chink in it. The prolonged pig-faced helmet was, similarly, solid, reflecting the environment like the curved mirror it was. One was left wondering how he can see.

The stranger, meanwhile, made some sort of convoluted gesture. The Senshi felt a second, more prominent wave of weakening, their senses dulling further.

"An enemy, after all!" Uranus exclaimed, her voice full of bitter disappointment.

Saturn groaned clutching at her temples as she fell down to one knee.

Uranus went berserk.

"Wait, we still don't..." Mercury began helplessly seeing Uranus rush the strange knight with all the strategy and grace of a rabid bison.

The Senshi ran after Uranus crying her to stop. Not only were they still unsure it was an enemy, they weren't ready to attack!

After that, the events unfolded rapidly. Uranus launched the deadly arch of "Space Sword Blaster". The crescent of yellow light hit its mark fading impotently. The enemy didn't even notice that, busy with making complex gestures. Uranus launched two more ranged attacks amid her mad dash. These two met the same fate. Then she leaped right at the stranger aiming to decapitate him with one sword strike. When she was almost upon him, he noticed her, at last. And made a startled swatting motion.

Uranus was thrown back so violently she just zipped over their heads flailing like a ragdoll. The stranger, on his turn, lost his balance from the overly sharp motion and tumbled down slamming head-first into a pile of boulders. But the shocked girls almost missed all of that, failing even to take note of where the hopefully alive Uranus has landed.

Because the whole ridge across the valley followed Uranus' example, thrown away as if kicked with a titan's foot. Mountains slid back, all the while collapsing into themselves. A tremendous dust cloud erupted upwards hiding the further details of the devastation.

"Just like that, off-handedly?" Venus half-croaked, half-squeaked.

The ground under their feet started shaking making them stumble. The sound reached them and its roar was tremendous.

Saturn completely lost it. Screaming something they couldn't hear she unleashed her terrifying power, launching the attack with one sharp swing of her halberd. There was a blinding purple glow none of then have seen before, they weren't used to Saturn's technique working that way. A deafening silence fell quenching even the roar of the tortured earth. The hellish glow drowned out both the knight and the pyramid, rising higher than the mountains. Thousands tons of solid rock crumbled rising up in black chunks and evaporating in the purpleness.

Eight shocked girls stood on their knees petrified. Saturn stumbled turning to run in search of her missing parent. But she was barely able to walk, too weak and drained.

The purple glow subsided revealing a huge gash in the mountain slope. A huge V-shaped gash. There was a sector of intact landscape in its center, the strange knight standing at its sharp point shielding his hidden eyes with his arm.

The eight girls gaped, their faces pale, their eyes wide, an icy grip of fear clutching at their hearts. The memory of invincible Sailor Galaxia was still fresh in their minds, and here it looked like that terror was ready to repeat itself!

"Well, that was disappointing," the knight said lowering his arm. His voice was clear, genderless and lifeless as if it was a machine speaking. "Nevertheless, let's get on with it." There was no trace of emotion in his voice.

The plasma jets spurting again, the menacing metallic figure began rising into the air.

"He wants to nail us from above?" Iris exclaimed in alarm. "Guys! You have to snap out of it! We have to do something!"

Mars and Jupiter launched their techniques. The powerful charges of elemental force faded out as they reached their target, not having a slightest effect. Neptune shouted out "Submarine Reflection", her mirror emitting a beam like a search-light. This faultless technique of true seeing was known for dispelling any illusions, revealing the enemies' true form and their weak spots. But not this time. Neptune wasn't surprised when the beam failed to reach the enemy, fading a couple meters short of him.

With a fierce shout, Venus threw her chain trying to entangle the knight and bring him down. Born of magic, the chain dispersed as it was going to reach the stranger. The part remaining in her hand slashed at the rocky slope, the severed end dispersed in golden sparks.

"Everyone, scatter!" Sailor Sol yelled as she rushed forward. "Don't you see? He's immune to magic!" She jumped over the V-shaped ravine made by Saturn onto the sector of intact rock, landing right below the rising knight.

Sailor Moon launched her tiara showing her ability to do it in less than half a second. Everyone felt a slight hope: it was this technique, after all, that proved decisive against the fake demon by tearing his shields apart like wet cardboard... The shining discus dashed, ligthning-fast, ricocheted off of the knight's armor in a shower of sparks and tumbled down, dull black and lifeless.

The knight was rising, faster and faster, having now gained around five stories above ground.

Sol made a desperate vertical jump. The enemy awkwardly bobbed in a belated attempt to dodge, but she have already grabbed him by his ankle. They immediately started sagging in the air: it seems the knight's jet engines weren't powerful enough to support them both.

Iris rushed towards their probable point of landing.

"Detransform!" Sol shouted, her gloves gone and the golden bracers were starting to disperse into sparks of light, as well as her wing-shaped decorative shoulder pads. The knight windmilled his legs flapping her around like a rag. "Careful, he's strong as two Ryougas!" She swung around his leg throwing her body up, grabbing the knight by the sides of his head with her heels and clinging to his back. Instantly reverting into a naked Ranma-chan.

"Watch out!" Mercury shouted, alarmed that her comrade lost her magical protection. "These jets are like welding torches but stronger!"

Ranma saw it herself that it wasn't a good idea to be touched by these incandescent plasma torches glowing dull violet. She jerked herself upward grabbing the thin jet-bearing beams that protruded out of the enemy's back. He started twisting his head and her feet almost slipped off of it. It was like trying to hold onto a leading wheel of a bulldozer: however you try it turns anyway completely disregarding your efforts. "Correction!" Ranma shouted towards Akane who've already detransformed. "He's monstrously strong! Don't let him grab you, he'll squash you like a ripe tomato and won't even notice!" Seeing the futility of her attempts to bend the beams she tucked her legs in, then uncoiled like a spring sending the enemy towards the ground with a double kick so powerful that she herself gained an upward speed.

The knight slammed nose-first into the rocky slope just below the ravine and started rolling down, floundering awkwardly and flopping from side to side. Akane, who expected him to land on the narrow central sector, was about to jump over the ravine onto the slope below when Venus detransformed into Minako. Into Minako in a warm winter clothing, over whose shoulder there was slung a...

"Are you nuts?" Mars yelled at her, backpedaling.

"Hey, hey, careful with that thing!" Jupiter sprung backwards.

"Umm... Minako-chan, do you really know how to use it?" Sailor Moon asked warily as she backed prudently away from her friend. Considering the blond's talent for epic failures with handling any machinery...

"Of course she doesn't!" Neptune shouted as she grabbed Saturn by her hand. "Take cover!" She dragged her daughter down the slope disappearing behind the rock outcropping where they had their spare winter clothing piled.

Taken by surprise amidst a jump, Akane just eeped. She threw herself backwards, back-first into the ravine, as soon as her feet touched the ground.

"You won't get us that easily!" Minako yelled hysterically. "Not anymore!" The M-16 in her hands roared shaking and sending a long burst in the general direction of the enemy. Bullets started ricocheting in all directions striking dust puffs from the rocks. Mars and Jupiter threw themselves to the ground praying that they wouldn't be hit. Stuck in a high jump, Ranma yelped when the weapon almost wrenched itself from Minako's hands, a wild burst coming dangerously close to the redhead. Sailor Moon scrammed down the slope like a frightened rabbit. Stumbling on the first rock to get in her way, she continued her tactical withdrawal tumbling head over heels.

"Dammit!" Minako growled tugging at the empty magazine. After some struggle she managed to uproot it, then she pulled a fresh one from the pocket of her parka.

"Stop it, you idiot! You'll kill someone!" Ranma yelled at her approaching the ground. But Minako didn't listen, beating the full magazine in like a nail. Ranma landed casting a glance at the knight who've already stopped rolling down and was trying to stand up. She looked at Minako who fell onto one knee gripping the weapon properly this time. She jumped down into the ravine joining Akane.

This time the crazed blond aimed better. She started firing at the knight with short bursts. With just twenty meters separating them, it was hard to miss, even for her. The bullets now ricocheted off of the knight too, flashing with showers of sparks.

The enemy flopped back down, muzzle-first, losing his balance out of surprise rather than from bullets having any effect on him. While Minako fumbled trying to attach a third mzgazine, the naked Ranma fell on her like a typhoon and tore the assault rifle out of her hands throwing it over the horizon. Then she laid into her with a verbal onslaught including "are you nuts", "you coulda killed someone" and "he doesn't feel it anyway" while stopping to grab a fistful of spent casings off the ground. Making just two huge leaps she reached the knight landing on his head. Her weight didn't bother him, he continued pushing off the ground with his hands. The plasma jets assisted him having turned downwards, leaving molten spots and making some rocks crack from the heat. Ranma moved, jerking backwards and thus pivoting the enemy around his hands so that his helmet slammed into the ground, his legs flailing in the air. It took him just a second to move his arms forward restoring his balance, but that second was all Ranma needed to push two spent casings into the tiny cylinders on the end of the beams. Sputtering with drops of molten metal, the plasma jets died.

"Got him!" exclaimed Ranma. "Now these torches are no danger!"

The surface of the beams and the engines cracked all over, curling inwards like the amalgam of an old mirror. The strange devices were see-through, with nothing inside the disintegrating surface, for the brief moment before they dispersed in quickly vanishing silvery specks.

"Now he can't fly!" Akane shouted leaping towards them and sending the knight tumbling down the slope with a kick in the back. "Ouch!" She jumped on one foot. "He's unnaturally hard!"

"He just negates anything you do with your ki, it's like that zone!" Ranma exclaimed as she dashed after the rolling knight whose awkward attempts to stop just prolonged his tumbling down the relatively flat slope. "Remember, I almost broke my leg?" She leap-kicked him with her bare heel adding a hefty acceleration.

"And what's now?" asked Mars, it was no rhetorical question. "Are you doing any damage?"

"I don't think so," Ranma replied self critically. "There's not a scratch on his armor. But while we're rolling him around he's disoriented and cannot blow mountains away."

"He _pprobably_ ·can not," Akane corrected her grimly while punting the knight in turn. "But it's a stalemate. We can't do anything to him..." A boulder got between the floundering knight's legs bursting asunder into shards and pebbles like it got into a stone crushing machine. The knight didn't even notice its resistance. With a mighty battle shout Akane threw an another boulder at him. It rebounded off the knight's helmet sending him flying head over heels. "And he can't regain his footing." She finished on an optimistic note.

The knight, meanwhile, tried a different tactic: stretching his arms and legs wide he tried to walk on all fours like a bow-legged turtle. It looked it would be not easy to upturn him this time, but Ranma grabbed him by his foot turning him over his head and sending him sliding further on his back. "Watch out, he begins to adapt!" she warned.

The knight tried to use his monstrous strength next: hitting his elbow on the ground he propelled himself to flop onto his belly, then forcefully pushed off the ground with his palms throwing himself into a standing position. He'd inevitably fall onto his back, having propelled himself too forcefully, but he additionally pushed off with his legs sending himself into the air. For a whole meter. With the grace of a drunken log.

Akane followed his tumbling figure with a critical, half-lidded stare. The strange knight landed on his head then actually managed to cartwheel, tumbling head over heels several times before he twisted and slowed down plowing the rocks with the muzzle of his helmet.

Mars detransformed into Rei pulling from her bosom a paper slip with four elaborately drawn kanji, "evil spirit begone". Running up to the enemy she slapped the ward onto his back. The deceivingly harmless piece of paper was able to stop almost any enemy outright paralyzing the weak ones while scrambling the powers of the stronger ones making their magic glitch and fail.

The ward slid to the ground, a slip of common paper devoid of any mystic powers. Rei, for her trouble, barely dodged the flailing knight's arm. She prudently decided to retreat.

"I told you, he negates anything ki!" Ranma shouted, while upturning the opponent for an umpteenth time. "Bugger! Everything's useless!"

"Not entirely!" Mercury objected as she continued scanning, doing it non-stop from the beginning. Text lines and diagrams ran along the visor covering her face. "Jupiter, hit him with magic please."

"Get clear!" Jupiter shouted to the pair of martial artists. "Supreme Thunder!"

Her lightning bolt struck at the knight, cut short a meter from him.

"Right!" exclaimed Mercury, a joyous relief in her voice. "Now I am positive that whatever his unknown factor is, a new kind of energy or a magic incompatible with our own, our efforts aren't disappearing in vain! The energies mutually neutralize!"

"Mind explaining it for us mere mortals?" grumbled Minako who stood nearby.

"It's obvious!" Ranma shouted from where she was rolling the knight around. "Negating ki and magic isn't free for him, he wastes his own energy! We can win!"

"Exactly!" affirmed Mercury. "Even when Ranko kicks him and her ki disappears, his X-factor diminishes...!" Her good spirits waned a bit. "Or, to be precise, his charging rate drops slightly."

"X-factor?" asked Minako.

"Well, I had to call this phenomenon somehow," Mercury replied sheepishly.

"Waitaminute!" Ranma sounded alarmed. " _What_ ·charging rate?"

"His X-factor rises exponentially," explained Mercury. "At the speed of zero point eight percent of its current level per second. Since his arrival it have increased..." She tapped the keys. "Two point four times."

"And why didn't you tell this sooner?！" Rei exploded.

"I just managed to make sense of the data I'm getting," Mercury sounded almost offended. "And only after inventing a new method of filtration. He's impossible to scan directly, you know. All I really have are distortions and discrepancies between different scanning methods!"

"Did you hear that?" Ranma crackled her knuckles. "Guys, fire at'im! While he hasn't grown ten times stronger!"

Neptune launched her powerful technique. The emerald green ball of energy streamed towards the enemy to disappear without a sound.

"The X-factor dropped zero point three percent!" proclaimed Mercury.

"While it increases zero point eight per second?" exclaimed Akane. She punted the knight, turning him over, and jumped aside seeing Sailor Moon leveling her scepter at him.

"Moon... Spiral... Heart... Ache!" While she was powering up, the knight almost managed to lift onto his feet. After all, two seconds is too long, even for an ultimate technique.

A devastating beam of purifying magic erupted from the scepter. Inside the containing field lined with spirals of golden crescents there flowed a stream of bouncy pink hearts pushing each other in their rush to reach the target like angry rose petals. So powerful was this technique that the average youma died seeing only the first pink of the hearts rushing at it with an inexorable finality.

In the vicinity of the knight the containing field failed first, the spirals of crescents unwinding and falling apart in golden sparks. Huge pink hearts erupted outwards like water from a hose against a wall, just to pop an instant later in showers of tiny pink hearts vanishing into the thin air. But Sailor Moon wasn't giving up. Sliding one foot back, she pushed with all her might, an expression of an angry attack hamster on her features. The beam of magic continued to flow into nothingness.

"They balanced each other out!" proclaimed Mercury. "The X-factor doesn't grow any more!"

"How much more does this guy need?" Ranma shouted grabbing her henshin rod out of the thin air. "He's a monster! Sol Stellar Power Make-Up!" Transforming into Sailor Sol she commanded: "Transform everyone! Akane, your Senshi techniques are the weakest, pin him down by throwing rocks! Everybody else, bring out all you got and then some! Stellar Jet!" A twisting stream of blinding ligth struck out of her outstretched hands. Now there were two beams of magic bathing the knight in their devastating power.

Sailor Moon bit her lip groaning under the strain. But she held her beam. Others transformed, who was detransformed by now, and started blasting with all their might. The air around the enemy rippled, saturated with the magical energy rapidly flowing into nothingness. Iris kept launching boulder after boulder knocking the knight down.

"The X-factor has dropped by twenty percent!" Mercury proclaimed, her voice strained.

The Senshi began to tire out. Sailor Moon fell to one knee, sweat rolling down her face. She held her beam on the sheer stubbornness alone.

"We won't make it like that!" shouted Sol. "I have a lot of power yet, but this technique could only use so much! Everyone get back, I'll try to blast it all at once!"

"Don't you dare!" Iris shouted in horror. "You'll kill yourself!"

"It's too dangerous! " echoed Mercury. "That technique of yours is partially..."

"We got no choice!" Sol interrupted the other girl her as she dropped her beam. "Sailor Moon won't hold long enough! Then it's only me an' Stellar Jet, that would be a stalemate and we're doomed!" She put her hands together in a tiger hand seal, a radiant flaming aura beginning to build around her making others squint and shield their eyes.

Iris grit her teeth retreating after the rest of them. Only Moon stayed put stubbornly holding her beam.

"Amaterasu..." Sol whispered with trepidation as she thrust her palms forward. Nothing horrified Ranma like this technique. It felt like staying on a brink of the abyss of non-existence. Err just a bit, overdo it just a little, and you'll gain a beautiful gravestone over an empty grave and the forever loving memories of your comrades.

A blinding torch of solar plasma flared where Sol stood, rapidly expanding until it touched the knight. At this moment Sol's technique went awry. The blinding flame swelled outwards gaining freedom, rising up to the sky, swallowing the knight. Then it billowed backwards engulfing Sol, rushing outwards like a tide, rolling over the panically running Senshi, evaporating snow and melting rocks.

"G-good thing we are fire-p-proof," Venus noted with a nervous laugh as she straightened pulling her shaking arms away from her face.

"Idiot! Brainless moron!" Iris snapped through tears of horror as she rushed frantically to her soulmate, barely visible through the rolling steam laying unmoving on the glowing, red-hot ground.

"What happened?" Jupiter asked Mercury. The air was full of steam and some strange, chemical-like stench. That, in addition to a different stench that was coming from the pile of winter clothing burning with a thick black smoke.

"Her technique failed partially," Mercury explained absent-mindedly, busy with scanning. "The part that calls forth the solar flame worked, the part that gives it form failed. The containment barrier was disrupted when it came into contact with the X-factor zone.

"So she hit herself?" Venus exclaimed, horrified as she remembered how the Sol's ultimate technique worked: an immense ball of blindingly hot fire held by the palms placed on it.

"Don't worry." Mercury hurried to reassure her. "We're able to survive almost three seconds in the top layers of sun. She interrupted her technique faster than that.

Meanwhile Iris ran up to her spouse, fearing the worst. Scooping the limp girl up from the red-hot ground, she slapped at the burning end of the rear bow's ribbon, and hurriedly carried the redhead away. She strained her senses trying to feel a heartbeat.

Sol jerked wheezing and shuddering in a coughing fit. This made Iris cry tears of joy. "You idiot, my dear idiot," she whispered lovingly, both the battle and the enemy forgotten at the moment.

"Where is... the enemy...?" the worn Sailor Moon squeezed out trudging up to Mercury. "Did we... win?"

"No!" the other girl shouted. "The X-factor is sixty percent of its registered maximum and rising!" She pointed at somewhere in the sky hidden with rolling steam. "There! Approximately at a hundred meters, hovers in one place!"

"I wonder, how much of his charge," Mars asked gloomily, "he spent to topple these mountains?" She had a very bad feeling.

"Approximately three percent," Mercury replied no less gloomily as she paged through the records of the early stages of their battle.

Making sure the stunned Sol begins to come to her senses, Iris took a small rock — twenty kilograms at most — and concentrated directing her senses upwards. It didn't take a long time for her to locate the blind spot, and she threw the rock with a loud shout.

"He's moving erratically!" exclaimed Mercury. "Descending! Falling...?"

The tumbling knight suddenly appeared from the steamy murk. Slamming into the ground he bounced a few times then rolled straight at Sailor Moon. She eeped backpedaling frantically, stumbled and landed on her posterior. In the last possible moment she stopped the rolling opponent with her feet, which left her bare-footed. After that she fled like a frightened rabbit, sometimes running and sometimes crawling on all fours, all the while exclaiming "Ouch!"

"It's just stupid," Sol grumbled as she stood up carefully feeling herself. "He's super-strong. He's invulnerable. And you could shoot him down with a rock."

"Be thankful you can shoot him down at all!" Iris angrily rebuffed her while searching for a suitable boulder to continue the usual routine.

"Seventy!" Mercury exclaimed in despair. "And something has changed in the zone surrounding him!"

The knight started standing up. Iris launched a boulder. The huge rock rebounded from an invisible barrier, thrown back with triple the strength. They had to dodge as it zipped past them hitting the slope a bit higher up to explode in stone shrapnel and a cloud of dust like an artillery shell.

The beam with plasma jets appearing from somewhere, the knight began rising again.

"Dammit!" Sol grit her teeth as she summoned a ball of plasma. Her magical gift was concussed by the feedback from the disrupted ultimate technique, even a simple exertion of her magic caused a raw pain to resonate through her spirit. "Solar Blaze!" The powerful ball of searing plasma hit the rising enemy like a pellet hitting an elephant.

Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Neptune — they all followed her example attacking with their remaining strength. A pale shadow of the previous barrage died against the menacing figure rising up into the sky. The tired out sailor-suited warriors hit it again. And one more time. They had no strength left.

"Seventy five and rising," Mercury reported, her voice crestfallen. A half hundred meters down the slope Sailor Moon followed the rising enemy with her eyes, her scepter having long ago vanished to where it comes from. She too had nothing left.

"Hotaru-chan!" everyone turned at the Neptune's desperate voice. Saturn, her halberd in hand, was stepping forward. There was an aura of violet light rising around her, a ghostly wind ruffling her hair. Her seifuku underwent some ominous changes: the standard shoulder pads transformed into something resembling flower petals, not unlike the decorative wings of Sol. But the most striking feature was her sailor crystal, now pointy and multi-pointed, glinting in her bow like a crystalline sea urchin. "Don't do it, Hotaru-chan!" Neptune begged her hopelessly.

"What... What's wrong?" Sol squeezed out trying to catch her breath.

"She has awakened her true power..." replied Neptune, her voice catching from despair. "If she strikes, her life..." She squeezed her eyes shut, tears leaking out. A rictus of grief distorted her face. Pluto, then Uranus. Now her daughter, the last of their family, was leaving her. The pain of loss growing stronger than she could stand the green-haired Senshi curled on the rocky ground, wailing quietly, deaf to everything around her.

The creepy knight talked for the second time: "A Judgment Day angel? So you seriously hope this would allow you to banish me?" He crossed his arms as he hung there bobbing, supported by his plasma jets. "We'll see."

"Gods damn it!" Sol growled trying to force her plasma beam through pain. A tiny flame gathered between her hands wobbling unstably before sputtering out. "Just a minute longer, I would recover enough!" She glanced back at Saturn who took a ready stance with her halberd. A suicidal ultimate technique, both a gift and a curse, was something he could sympathize with, having his own one. The sight of Neptune crushed with grief made Sol to think even more desperately searching for a solution. There should be something she could...

Then it hit her.

"Wait! Where are you going!" Iris shouted out in panic when a radiant aura suddenly enveloped Sol as the fiery-haired Senshi dashed towards Saturn who've already swung her halberd back, enveloped in her own aura of purple and dread. Sol managed in the last possible moment to grab on the other girl's shoulder, their auras flaring brightly at the point of contact.

A split second later Saturn let go of a torrent of destructive energy lashing from the halberd blade like a violet lightning bolt.

The world shook. The sailor-suited warriors froze for a moment, paralyzed by the proximity to such a charge of decay and ruin, the very essence of death, that lashed past them. Both Sol and Saturn collapsed. Saturn was barely breathing, bluish-pale, burned-out and unconscious but alive. Sol hissed writhing in agony and coughing up blood.

"What did you do?" asked Iris as she ran up to them, beside herself from worry. But the words she heard in reply made her falter in despair:

"Still not enough," the knight commented hanging in the same place, in the same pose.

"Forty three percent and rising," Mercury reported with a sob of despair. She put her computer away deactivating her visor. "So, this is it?" She lifted her eyes towards the enemy, then called upon her full yet reserves. "Mercury Aqua Rhapsody!" She grabbed a harp of ice out of the thin air. The jets of icy water snaked up, emerging from nowhere and disappearing into nowhere. Jupiter struck one more time, with the last remains of her strength. Nobody else was able to move, only Iris stood throwing a ki blast after ki blast growling in rage. These vanished the same as the magic blasts. Mercury supported her as long as she could before collapsing onto her knees, spent.

"And that's all?" the knight asked looking left and right. There was still no slightest hint of emotion in his voice despite the tone of his phrasing. "Quite regrettable." He started descending.

"I'll show you regrettable!" yelled Iris. "Thunder Hammer!" She too was beginning to tire, even the Senshi regeneration was no match for her hurricane expenditure of ki. "Thunder Hammer! Take that! Thunder Hammer!"

"I won't let you..." Sailor Moon whispered lifting to her feet with a supreme effort. She made a few steps forward not noticing the sharp rocks biting into her bare feet anymore. "We will all return home together..." A ball gown rolled down like a wave replacing her seifuku. "We will walk this life together..." Light shone between her cupped palms forming a small, multi-faceted gem. "And we will love and be loved..." The light flared filling her with brilliant glow. "And you, guys, will yet attend my wedding..." Her hair turned silver instantly growing back over the bald spot and forming an odango. "I beg you, Silver Crystal..."

The knight turned around, so sharply he almost lost his balance. His entire posture changed from that of disdain into a live illustration of shocked disbelief.

"A reality warper?" his voice was still even and emotionless. "Wait, you can't do that. It's too dangerous, stop it. The incompatible continuums may..."

A beam of purest silver light flowed forth washing over the knight... An irresistible force of the strongest magic focus in the galaxy met an immovable obstacle of alien metaphysics. Two fundamental forces mutually impossible to exist relatively to each other came into contact.

The space-time didn't quite get the joke. It burst asunder under the onslaught of _un_ possible contradictions.

The sky shattered fragmenting like a broken mirror. The ground fell away from under their feet. Everything around them was flooded with blinding light and blinding darkness. The mechanical voice of Ahs thundered, stuttering and repeating itself, trying to report of some or other failures before it finally stuck repeating "Error...! Error...! Error...!". That was the last thing they heard before plummeting into a black vortex that quenched their consciousness.

Only the mysterious knight continued to hang in a timeless nothingness surrounding him as the ruptured space-time fell from under his feet. Only rare lines of code that ran his universe flashed by him from time to time.

"This... complicates everything," he concluded wile absent-mindedly scratching the back of his helmet with his armored fingers.

(シーンブレイク)

January 06, 2011 - March 29, 2012. Translated January 29, 2011 - January 10, 2012. Last correction April 11, 2016.

 **Author's notes:**

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— OSMQEP  
— poVitter  
— Orphus users (20 ляпа total)  
— Orphus users (11 bugs so far)  
— Stealth111


	8. Up the Creek without a Paddle

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled v1.5**

 **Arc Two  
Dive into the Unknown**

 **Chapter 8  
Up the Creek without a Paddle.**

(シーンブレイク)

Akane was awoken to consciousness by a trembling of earth and a long, rolling rumble. An earthquake! She jerked frantically, not yet fully aware of who she was, where she was... Her consciousness was returning slowly, sluggishly. Her brain felt like it was wrung out then hung in the sun to dry. She shut her eyes tightly then blinked a few times trying to clear blinding haze out. Lifting off the ground awkwardly on one elbow, she wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. It was bright and cold here... Or hot? Or both at the same time? What was this strange place? How did she get here? She dimly remembered a blinding flash, but after that...?

She remembered the battle and it made her jump to her feet. Or try to. Her coordination haven't returned yet, she fell onto her side. There was a strange chill in her entire body, reminding of times of sickness. The last she remembered was Usagi... No, Princess Serenity smiting the enemy with her incredible power... Did they win? Or...?

The realization that she is laying naked on the cold and wet rocks hit her like a bucket of ice water. However muddled her mind was, she remembered the fate of their set of spare winter clothing clearly. They prepared it for exactly such an occasion — but it burned down. Panicking, Akane jumped to her feet. She fell, rose back on all fours... And froze in confusion. Her eyes were growing accustomed to the light revealing a familiar panorama: the snowy tops of the ridge, the black pyramid in the central sector of the gash made by Saturn... A sea of green behind it all... Something was terribly wrong with this picture. And why did her back feel so hot? She tried again to stand up, slowly and carefully. After a couple tries she succeeded. Swaying unsteadily she took a stupefied look around.

The snow-covered slope stretched left and right for several hundred meters. Then it ended abruptly, and further away there was only green, as far as eye could see. She almost fell a couple times, then her sense of balance returned and she realized what was so wrong. The slope wasn't a slope anymore, it became horizontal! Akane turned to and from looking around. It seemed that a chunk of the mountain ridge, from the tops to approximately the bottom, has been uprooted and then deposited somewhere among forested hills. The ground trembled again, a column of dust rising at the edge of the former mountainside. A wave of deep, rolling rumbling washed over her. Still in stupefaction, Akane flexed her shoulders and stared into the bright blue sky shielding her eyes with a palm from the hot tropical sun. So they were whisked away together with a chunk of... They!

"Ranmaaa! Guys!"

She panicked looking around frantically for her comrades. She didn't see anybody and her heart fell... Then her mind freed itself, at last, from that murk. She noticed not far away a nude girl body with a mane of red hair sprawled among some rags.

"Ranma‼！" Akane rushed to him, still unsteady on her feet. She didn't even notice how she got there, falling to her knees in haste beside him, feeling for the pulse... Was he alive? He was‼！ Shedding tears of relief she started shaking the other girl. Finally Ranma mumbled unintelligibly blinking owlishly.

"Nngh... What..."

"Are you all right? Oh, what a relief! You're alive!"

"Akane?" recognition slowly appeared in the redhead's eyes. "What happened... And why are you naked...? And..." She looked at the sun in zenith squinting and covering her eyes awkwardly with one hand. "And why can't I feel it?"

"Feel what?"

"Sun..." Ranma frowned rubbing at her temples. "Feels like all my magical senses went deaf."

Akane listened to herself. She realized suddenly that it was the same for her. It was like a part of her ability to see and feel just disappeared.

"It's probably an anti-magic zone like the one in Tokyo... Listen, we were transferred to some tropical land together with the whole mountain. We have to find the others!"

"The others?" the redhead perked up finally shaking cobwebs from her mind. "Right. Princess, the guys..." She took her first good look around. "What the hell...?" She froze for a moment, dumbfounded. "We really got transferred..." Her eyes caught on something, making her smile in joy. "Hey, it's my shirt! The one that disappeared back in Tokyo!" She grabbed her red Chinese silk shirt from the ground quickly putting it on. "And my boxers! And my pants! And my henshin pen...?"

Sparing a moment from worrying about her spouse, Akane finally recognized these 'rags' were the clothing they wore before transforming. It has returned, even if scattered around. Realizing that she was walking around in her birthday suit, Akane hurried to the spot where she woke up. She was relieved to find all her clothing scattered around, even the parka and other winter articles. Her henshin pen was here too, as well as her communicator — both intact but unresponsive. Akane quickly got dressed lamenting that a wrap miniskirt and a designer blouse were far from an ideal attire for a rescue operation in the wilderness. But she had little to choose from. Despite the cold seeping from the rocky ground, she couldn't walk around in winter clothing: the sun here was positively scorching. After a thought she donned the warm boots: she didn't feel like walking bare-footed across the freezing-cold rocks.

They hastily combed the area finding Ami laying unconscious amidst her scattered clothing. There was also the Mercury computer and a lot of small appliances of which they recognized only a video camera. Surmising that Mercury kept it all in her subspace pocket, Ranma thoroughly turned away and hurried to comb further leaving Akane to dress the unconscious girl.

But they didn't find anyone else, only some disturbing anomalies. There were five small chunks of foreign landscape cut into the former mountain slope, ranging from a hole filled with tree branches to a miniature swamp. Approximately where they last saw their comrades in arms. And a huge circle of high grass, one and a half their height, with a half of some baobab at its edge, surrounded by a ring of crushed rock. It's where their Princess was.

"Don't have to wonder," Ranma said grimly as she kicked at a pile of dry sand. "They were scattered far and wide. And no clues how to get them back."

"Maybe Ami could figure something out?" suggested Akane. "I wonder where we are? I hope we're still on Earth? Or...?"

The first pterodactyl to fly by told them that 'or'.

They didn't talk about the invincible knight. But the very fact of his existence weighed heavily on them. If he survived, if he returns, they had nothing to oppose him. Leaving Akane to watch Ami until she wakes up, Ranma went exploring around the edge of their 'island' in search for cover. She didn't find anything of use there, only a sheer drop of fifty meters in average. Beyond it there was a sea of jungle stretching uniformly up to the horizon shrouded in a moist haze. She didn't risk getting down: the cliff edge was in perpetual collapsing causing small earthquakes. Get buried in such a landslide and not even Ryouga could dig you up. The rock avalanches were of impressive proportions, as if the whole rocky massif cracked during transition losing its integrity.

Jumping away timely as cracks snaked under her feet, Ranma walked back dusting her shirt from the dust the avalanche spat up at her. They could always take the risk of diving into the jungle, she decided. But better leave it as a last option. The snow was starting to melt where the haywire technique of Sailor Sol didn't get to it. Small streamlets gurgled between the rocks. Combing the whole 'island' Ranma didn't find anything of notice, only a broken assault rifle without a magazine inherited from Minako. She didn't risk getting close to the pyramid, leaving it to after Ami wakes up.

They spent half a hour waiting in tense silence: cold water didn't wake Ami up but they weren't willing to resort to more radical methods. Ranma meanwhile tied her hair back into her trademark pigtail. The enemy did not return and the two girls relaxed a bit although they still watched around. At last Ami regained her consciousness. They quickly brought her up to date with the recent events hoping she would think of a way to return their missing comrades. First thing Ami reached for the Mercury computer. But the magi-tech gadget refused to work. With rising frustration she went through all her appliances but these were either burned out or useless in regards to the problem at hand.

She examined the intrusions of alien landscape and her expression became grim. "If it took me that long to regain consciousness..." She poked at a mix of dirt and natant plants with a stick, revealing dirty water under this relatively thin layer. "Many of them could have already fallen victims to the environment... Or to predators... I'm letting everyone down, don't I?"

"Don't fret," Ranma reassured her. "They are seasoned gals, they won't die that easily. Let's check the pyramid for now, maybe we'll find something useful there."

(シーンブレイク)

Minako came to struggling in something stinky and sticky. With a sick, harrowing horror she realized that her nude body was being squeezed by something long and writhing‼！ The deafening shriek of fear and outrage sent each bird for kilometers around flying. The hot-shot blond started thrashing like woman possessed, then she bit down on the disgusting tentacle growling and shaking her head from side to side like a bulldog.

The giant boa swam away in panic, traumatized for the rest of its life. It won't try hunting anything like that, ever! Crocodiles are much safer.

Minako was gulping air in big, shuddering breathes, hanging onto branches of a tree rising from the swamp. A tree with a straight, slippery trunk without a single branch for ten meters or so below her. "I wonder how did I get here?" she asked aloud. "And where's everyone?"

(シーンブレイク)

"Stop worrying about them so much," Ranma tried to convince Ami for an umpteenth time. "They'll be fine! Let's check if there's a hidden door or something."

The black pyramid turned out to be a dead end and a complete disappointment. They approached it hopefully at first, watching the enormous sharp-pointed edifice warily. A good third of Tokyo Tower in height, it rested on a flat pillow of gravel. Alas, beyond the modest arched entrance the size of a good gate, there was only an empty hall. Granted, a perfect mirror floor looked impressive creating a dizzying kaleidoscopic effect as it reflected the faceted dome made of similar perfect mirrors. It took them some time to realize what this weird space was. But the novelty quickly wore off leaving them with an empty round hall some fifteen meters across. It was many times smaller than the base of the pyramid and it was useless for the only thing that mattered to them: getting their comrades back.

"There's nothing here," replied Ami with a patient sigh as she rapped methodically at one of flat mirrors that closed six out of seven arched depressions sunk into the half-spherical dome. "Not a slightest response, it feels solid."

"All these arches have to lead somewhere," Ranma insisted without much conviction or hope. They were arguing this over for a third or fourth time, their investigation going in circles.

"I can film this hall on the video camera if you want." The frustration in Ami's voice was starting to become apparent. "These mirrors reflect any sonic waves. If something gets through, it's below the resolution of the tools at hand. The same for light, at all wave lengths. And there are no weak points, you told it yourself."

Ranma had to agree. Wherever these blocked arches led — and there was enough room for dozens of such halls inside the pyramid — they had no way to know. Whatever these mirrors were made of, Ranma and Akane couldn't even scratch their perfect, unmarred surface. For ki senses the world ended at its surface, as if there was an infinite, silent void beyond the thin film of mirror. It was quite disconcerting and creepy to try feeling chi flows from inside the hall: the overall effect was a spiritual equivalent of a dead silence of a deep crypt.

And yet the pyramid was anything but a dead, passive object. During the transition of their rocky massif the former vertical tilted about thirty degrees. The humongous construct reoriented itself and stood now perfectly straight feigning inertness. But the ring of gravel surrounding it told otherwise. The solid rock had been ground to fine pieces by the motion of the pyramid's underground part. It could very well happen to be the strange knight's starship, especially considering the fact his armor was composed of similar invulnerable mirrors.

"I'm ready to start undermining it," Ranma muttered in a fit of temper. It was like grabbing at straws, actually: no one of them knew techniques allowing to dig through such a flowing substance as gravel with only their bare hands. The Crushing Point was useless here.

"What a sty!" Ranma kicked at the insurmountable mirror. "Ooff..." Doing that, purely out of frustration, wasn't the smartest thing. The mirror surfaces negated any effects of ki at the point of contact, resulting in an unprotected human flesh propelled by ki-reinforces muscles hitting an unyielding wall. One could really hurt himself here.

"I doubt that would help," said Ami not even noticing she began to turn into Captain Obvious.

"I know, I know," Ranma grumbled rubbing at her bruised hand. "We're like flies in a jar here, could only wait until someone comes and swats us."

Ami pulled out her computer renewing the hopeless attempts to resurrect it. The machine was nominally alive but displayed some boot error related to magic sensors. She closed the useless gadget in frustration. "I wish I just could open a portal to where my friends are!" The quiet girl felt like banging her head against a wall.

"Invalid coordinates," a melodic mechanical voice echoed through the hall startling all the three girls. "Repeat your input through your personal portable interactor or speak a voice formula aloud preceding it with your code phrase."

"What... What was that?" Akane asked with some fear glancing around.

"That's it!" Ranma snapped her fingers. "Ami got to be this, er, ahs-lord just like us! Hey, Akane, you're probably too! That's why the three of us remain here while the others are scattered around!"

"What ahs-lord?" Akane asked, confused.

"Well, remember what that bastard told us?" Ranma reminded her. "The system will not deign to reply to anyone but them! Ahs-seven Tkhachshchas Eet-suht, open the portal a kilometer above us!"

"Your command open portal is rejected," the mechanical voice replied her. "Safety condition seven. Unacceptable short distance to this transport node."

"Then..." Ranma didn't give up, inspired by her success. " Ahs-seven Tkhachshchas Eet-suht, open a portal to a point ten kilometers above us!"

"Attention, opening a portal in aperture five," the mechanical voice raised her hopes. "Warning, security condition forty three. Unacceptable atmospheric pressure difference."

"Idiot‼！" yelled Akane as she grabbed Ami and tore towards the exit. "It'll suck us in like a vacuum cleaner!"

"You think so?" Ranma asked nervously glancing round.

Akane didn't make it. The air rushed towards her like a resilient wall, its force pushing her across the slippery floor... The next instant it cut off, the entrance arch opening covered with a rainbow membrane similar in appearance to that of a soap bubble.

"Safety mechanisms employed according to protocol forty three," the mechanical voice noted dispassionately.

"You see? Everything's fine..." Ranma squeaked nervously as she backed away from her wife advancing on her like a storm cloud. "Look, it did open a portal!" She pointed at an arch behind her back where, beyond a similar membrane, one could see a deep blue sky, a faraway horizon and clouds floating far down below. Akane snorted like an angry bull releasing her rage in two puffs from her nostrils. But her curiosity proved stronger. She carefully approached the portal and took a look down, careful to not touch the opalescent barrier. Deep down there, below clouds, there was a sea of jungle looking dark blue from up here. She could even see the edge of their rocky 'island'.

"See? We broke through!" Ranma proclaimed triumphantly while poking at the opalescent membrane which yielded resiliently under her finger. "Now Ami will figure this system out in no time... Right, Ami?" She turned around to the girl in question. Distracted, she only had time to eep when the membrane gave under her finger jumping up her hand to the wrist. The atmospheric pressure difference did the rest, pulling suddenly at the redhead's hand, which made her suffer the shame of losing her balance. When her body touched the membrane she was ejected forcibly like a cork from an over-pressured bottle.

"Ranma-kun!" Ami gasped.

"Don't worry," Akane reassured her. "Ki works here, he'll be fine. This will teach him to think what he's doing next time!"

"Bugger," grumbled Ranma as she shielded her eyes with one arm against the freezing wind. "I just had to make such a fool of myself!" She rolled face up throwing her arms wide and enjoying the view of the deep blue stratospheric sky. "A blunder of lifetime... Now I have to fall for hell knows how long, to be ridiculed when I land." She pouted scringing from the cold. "What's most vexing, I asked for it!"

She quickly grew bored with falling so she flipped face down trying to get a good look around despite the onrushing air threatening to freeze her eyelids shut. There was nothing down there. No mountains at the horizon, no sea, no noticeable rivers — just the endless sea of jungle and the rough circle of rock with a black seed of the pyramid in its center.

It took a long time before she plunged through the cloud layer.

(シーンブレイク)

Sitting on the thin branches was uncomfortable. Various blood-sucking insects didn't give her time to grow bored either. At least her back was covered by that ungodly mess her waist-length hair turned into. Minako sadly had to give up the idea of braiding it before it caught on something. She needed two free hands and a more reliable perch for that.

Glancing around she finally noticed down below her parka sunk into the mess of rotting plants by her and boa's thrashing. The parka promised at least a partial respite from the mosquitoes pestering her so Minako started looking for a way to get down safely. She didn't want to jump from ten meters high into a swamp of unknown depth. Who knew what snags could be hidden under the surface?

Her plans were scratched out by a ridgy back parting the plant carpet lazily not that far from her tree.

"I'd better be eaten alive by mosquitoes rather than a crocodile," decided the blond as she slapped energetically at an another blood-sucker. "I'll endure it up here until our girls come to the rescue..." Her expression darkened as she remembered how many days it took for Ami to find Sol and Akane and build a working portal to Jadeite's world. "I'll die on this tree and crocodiles will have to settle for my dried up mummy! Waitaminute, did something glint down there?"

Her henshin pen floated there, almost completely hidden by leaves. Minako immediately perked up.

"Hah, here's my escape! Venus doesn't fear any crocodiles. Plus I'll be able to swing between the trees like Tarzan!" She began carefully climbing down scraping her hands and knees on the rough bark and barely holding. Roughly halfway down she lost her grip anyway, splashing down into the swamp back first. She barely managed to surface scrambling through the mess of floating plants. She began feeling around in panic blinking away the dirty swamp water until finally managed to find her henshin pen. She smirked at the approaching ridgy back. "You think breakfast is served? Wait and see who's the boss in this swamp!"

The transformation phrase fell empty, devoid of power. The henshin-pen didn't respond turning out to be a dead, useless bauble.

"Or not..."

The crocodile was rapidly approaching.

(シーンブレイク)

Amortizing her fall with a ki blast fired at the ground the slightly chilly Ranma finished her ten-kilometer fall without any problems. To her immense relief Akane was together with Ami, fully concentrated on some thingy. It seemed there would be no ridiculing. Ranma approached quietly, trying not to attract attention.

"No, this button returns you back. For zooming in, use that one," Ami was explaining patiently. "They have the same effect only because your last action was zooming out."

"What do you have here?" the redhead asked the girls bent over an unknown object.

"Don't distract me!" Akane waved her away irritably. "So which one zooms out, you say?"

Ranma looked over her wife's shoulder. The thing turned to be a hybrid of a medallion and something akin to Mercury computer. A round brass-colored medallion the size of a palm with a massive hinge and a thick chain was opened revealing the bottom half stuffed with buttons while the top half glowed greenish color.

"This one," Ami repeated patiently touching a brass-colored button marked with black kanji so filigreed they were almost invisible. "It's even titled 'panorama scale'."

Akane looked closer. "You'd need a microscope to read all of this! What would I do if I have to work it while running...?！ All right, moving on."

"This one," Ami continued poking at an another button, "moves your view across the map. It's proportional to the zoom scale, so you have to master using both modifiers to operate the map." She demonstrated this by pushing big buttons with arrows on them taking the edges of the circular keyboard. Ranma managed to glimpse a web of hair-thin black lines flickering on the glowing inner surface of the lid before the irate Akane punted her away, annoyed by her intruding presence.

"And here is the most important one," concluded Ami. "The cancellation button that reverts everything to the initial state. Remember it for a case when you lose your way through the functions or press a wrong button. Press it enough times and you'll return to the initial mode."

"It's labeled 'renunciation'," commented Akane with a sigh squinting at the barely discernible kanji. "I'd like to know who was the joker that... All right, open it!"

Ami took the medallion from her hands and started tapping something rapidly with two fingers, as deftly as she usually did using the Mercury computer.

"What' with you and stuff—" Ranma indignantly cut in as she returned from the point of her landing.

"Quiet, don't interfere!" hissed Akane silencing her.

Could it be she's simply mocking me subtly instead of ridiculing openly? thought Ranma.

One of the arches blazed with light opening with a quiet pop into some extremely well lit place. The mirror hall was instantly flooded with light and heat.

"Let's go!" Akane shouted at the redhead as she took the medallion from Ami's hands. "The portal won't stay open for long!"

"Don't worry," Ami tried to reassure her. "The limit is half a hour."

"Exactly!" retorted Akane with the same energy as she hastily exited the arch filled with light. "If we fail to fit in that limit, we'll be stuck there forever, cut off from everyone. R-r-ranma, are you coming or are you growing roots there?"

The redhead hastily followed her, jumping out of the portal to wherever it led. She found herself in a desert. A desert full of such a white and sparkly sand that her eyes hurt. The light was blinding. Her feet started baking through the thin soles of her kung-fu slippers. Well, she endured worse. Ranma shielded her eyes from the scorching sun with a palm, squinting. Akane was climbing up a dune so snow white it was painful to look at. She was casting glances at the medallion trying to poke there which almost made her lose her balance on the free-flowing slope.

"Where are you going?" the redhead avowed her concern. It was good for Akane in her warm winter boots, the heat couldn't reach through those easily.

"One of us is there." Akane gestured fiercely in the direction of the top of the dune the size of a small mountain range. "Five kilometers away. If we won't make it back in a half-hour, we're stuck here forever! Got that?"

"So you've found a way to find them?" Ranma exclaimed in joy rushing after her up the flowing sand that sucked her efforts like it would water. She instantly met an unpleasant surprise: ki here... Well, it worked somehow. But she would be barely able to jump two meters up. If she stood on a flat firm surface. She had to forget about scaling the mountain of sand in one go.

Akane was fiercely tearing up the endless slope showing no mercy to herself. It proved not so easy to catch up with her.

They both were huffing as they emerged on the crest of the ridge. The sweat wasn't rolling down, it kept drying up faster than it appeared. Akane without delay ran down the much gentler slope. The sand seemed more firm here. Ranma lingered to take a good look around shielding her eyes with a palm and squinting at the bright light. Just as she thought. She ran after Akane, it again took her some time to catch up with the other girl.

"Turn to the left!" she shouted. "To the left, I tell you!"

"She is there!" Akane pointed stubbornly with her hand. "I got a good bearing!"

"And the next ridge is lower there!" Arguing while running full tilt was exhausting. "We'll lose less time!"

Akane finally troubled herself with looking where she was going as she shielded her eyes on the run. Without saying a word she turned a bit to the left.

"Conserve your strength," added the redhead. "Ki doesn't work here."

"I know, I'm not blind," Akane breathed out through her teeth. She glanced into the medallion and pushed faster, setting a totally exhausting pace. "Time."

There was nothing to counter that. If they get stuck in this desert, they'll most assuredly die. As far as Ranma could see from that top, the dunes stretched to the horizon.

They reached a saddle where the curved ends of two adjacent crescent-shaped dunes fused together. And again up a free-flowing slope escaping from under their feet. Akane tore upwards frantically trying to climb straight, trying at an angle — either way it was equally slow. But there was the top, at last. Akane almost made it when the sand under her feet slid down in a small avalanche dragging her down while rolling her from side to side and threatening to swallow. She cried out thrashing desperately until she managed to tear free and jump onto her feet after which she slid three more meters down. The redhead winced in sympathy: the sand was so hot it hurt to touch it, while her wife haven't bothered to change out of the mini-skirt into something more suitable for the desert. Now she also had sand in her boots and other wrong places.

Uttering a quiet curse Akane tore forward again. They climbed over the edge at the safe place that was already collapsed, and continued their extremal race under the direly scorching sun. The flat back slope transited into a hillocky plain of sand, then into a labyrinth of small crescent-shaped dunes. The girls had to either meander between these, or climb up their small but still exhaustingly steep faces. Despite the obstacles they quickly reached the next ridge of dunes. There was no united wall here so they only had to zig-zag between the ends of adjacent dunes curling towards them. Even across the sand the girls were running faster that most sprinters could across a racing track. But the cost... Ranma was thinking that a pace one third slower, without the pressing need to save a comrade, would make for a good endurance training. Ki this, ki that — you don't even notice as you get accustomed to rely on the spiritual force in everything. It's just that nobody before knew a way to suppress it so completely and uniformly. Hmm, here's an idea. If that zone in Tokyo doesn't resolve itself it would be possible to open a specialized doujo there. For the most advanced masters, to repeat the basics.

They passed the third ridge, and the fourth, and the fifth. The pain in their abused muscles alone would be enough to fell a common mortal. Both were rasping for air, their throats dry. Sun was burning them from above, its heat reflecting off the white sand below that burned their feet through the shoes. Akane was frowning more and more as she kept glancing at the tiny screen of the medallion. The sixth ridge was rising ahead, solid and even like a wall, with no discernible passes. They began climbing it. Akane growled in anger pushing herself mercilessly. Ranma kept even with her, she had a gut feeling that their fate hung on a rapidly thinning thread. They had yet to travel back, encumbered. The sand indifferently drank their efforts. The slope kept stretching forever.

Finally they were over the crest. Akane stopped for a second, rasping for air. She opened the medallion and started pressing buttons missing with her shaking fingers. Then she slammed it shut emitting a hiss of joy: they couldn't talk anymore. She rushed forward with a new strength, turning to the right. Ranma got it: they've made it! Now just grab the girl and—

Akane stumbled losing her balance in surprise and falling face first into the scorching-hot sand. With a brief hiss, she jumped onto her feet to just stand there looking left and right helplessly along a track of fuzzy, formless footprints.

Ranma looked closely, then gestured to their left. Akane croaked something unintelligible but clearly unflattering about their lost comrade: the tracks were leading further away! They ran like girls possessed. The sand ended, replaced by an uneven rocky plain. The dark ground was hotter than the white sand, there was a very dense heat haze rising above it. The rescuers separated without saying a word: this murk could hide an elephant a hundred steps away. They kept close but still barely saw each other as blurry, wavering spots. Despair stepped closer, clutching at their hearts: what if she fell and is lying down? They'd never spot her amidst the uneven terrain littered with rocks!

They were moving too slowly, straining their vision until their eyes hurt. Time was running out.

Akane rushed to the right with a croak of joy. Ranma ran after her, but her wife emerged out of the haze going back, subdued. She saw things. They returned, as much as they could tell, to their previous course. With each passing second their resolve to die but not give up was close to the reality as merciless as the sun here.

They came together. An untrained girl couldn't have possibly went as far while they were running from the portal. Ranma wanted to ask why not determine the lost girl's position the same way they found it the first time? But she saw Akane clutching the medallion in her fist with impotent anger. She swallowed her words. Not that either of them could talk, but still.

They ran back, faster now, separating further so they could barely guess each other's position. Ranma saw something moving. She almost ignored it: everything was moving here. The oppressively sweltering air streamed and wavered, making even the horizon twist in a slow, viscous dance.

But still she turned to check. She felt an indescribable relief when a small figure finally materialized, clad in winter clothing. The lost one was trudging perpendicularly to her previous direction. The redhead quickly caught up with her. The girl was swaying like drunk, the long raven hair hanging on one side from under her hood looked gray, peppered with thin white dust. Ranma quickly grabbed Rei and ran back orienting somehow by the sun that hung almost in the zenith. The rescued one started thrashing at first, then she recognized Ranma and allowed herself to lose consciousness. Ranma just grunted in displeasure: it was suddenly harder to carry the limp girl. She threw her over her shoulder like a sack and ran with all her might. There was the sand, at last. Her feet started sinking deeply under the double weight, the desert didn't want to release its prey. And where's Akane?

Akane ran out of the haze-enshrouded rocky plain. She lost Ranma, she was disoriented and confused by the mockingly complex mechanism. Touching her own hair was painful, her dark blouse turned into a tool of torture. Not that her bare arms and legs fared better. She was about to dive back into the haze to search for Ranma when she noticed the redhead bearing someone slung over her shoulder running heavily up the flat slope of the sand mountain. They did it! Rasping and stumbling, Akane ran after them.

Ranma simply slid down. She'd prefer much faster rolling head over heels but she didn't want to hurt the unconscious girl. And again the exhausting run across the sand. And down again in a barely controlled slide. Her head was throbbing with heat, her vision swimming, her muscles protesting shrilly. How many sand ridges to go? She didn't even notice when Akane managed to sweep Rei from her arms, but running became a bit easier. Then she stumbled over a fallen Akane. She scooped Rei up and ran forward. She wished dearly to stop and help her wife up, but time, time! There was none. She had to convince herself that Akane will surely regain her strength and catch up to her. And she did, some indeterminable time later. Croaking something she pulled at Ranma's sleeve. Ranma looked around unsteadily, there was a red haze obscuring her vision. Ah, their own footprints. Must keep to. She turned a bit to the right. Why did this slope stretch so long.

Akane opened the medallion. She took one glance. Emitting a rasp of despair she fell down to her knees, limp and dispirited.

It was over.

Ranma continued running forward. Partly from stubbornness, partly because she became too dumb to realize it, as her brain was beginning to shutting down. Here's the crest. She plowed over it landing on her ass and sliding down in a heap of sand. The sensitive spot was hurting from the compound touch of the sand and her black pants that got too hot in the sun. But that was such a triviality. The portal at the base of the sand mountain looked weird, like a dark arch-shaped mirror. Ami was shouting something standing with one foot here and her other foot there. The mechanical voice was droning some warning. The redhead made the last dash sliding in the hot quagmire tearing free and sliding again. He didn't remember how he reached the portal. Putting Rei down he turned back, to get his wife. But Ami stopped him with a gesture. Akane was already there, sliding down, rolling from side to side and cussing hoarsely. So she regained her composure, after all.

As soon as the wrongly dressed dark-haired girl fell in through the portal Ami pulled her foot back. The portal closed instantly turning into a mirror. The hall darkened considerably.

Ranma and Akane fell down noisily inhaling the oh so cool air. Ami was telling them something, the mechanical voice droned something, but it went over them. They made it! They saved her!

Five to go.

They preferred not to think about the fate of Uranus. If the Outer forgotten in the heat of battle managed by some miracle to survive that blow, if she wasn't erased by the following cataclysm, then she'll be waiting for them home, on Earth. They hoped that her landing spot was far enough _beyond_ ·the edge of the transited chunk of landscape. If it wasn't... then thousands tons of rock have already become her tombstone.

(シーンブレイク)

Translated February 05, 2012. Last correction April 11, 2016.

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— Orphus users (11 bugs so far)  
— gsteemso


	9. Sick of Fanserfice

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled v1.5**

 **Chapter 9,  
Sick of Fanservice**

(シーンブレイク)

Ranma and Akane were still lying on their backs breathing heavily, wheezily. They weren't showing any reaction to outside stimuli. Totally worn out. Seeing that they were out Ami switched to fussing over Rei. The unconscious girl had an obvious heat stroke. She wiped sweat from her brow. How did these two survive their run? She barely held on while just staying on the threshold. She began hastily unzipping Rei's parka. The hat was missing and the black hair spilled haphazardly on the mirror floor. Good, thought Ami. This floor looks sterile, it's probably the most sterile surface on this planet. There was nothing on Rei under the parka and Ami started worrying about her henshin pen. But there was no time even for such an important thing. To her great relief, she hadn't have time during the hurried preparations to shed her lab coat. It was a synthetic fabric, but still... She ran outside and soaked both sleeves she tore off in a close pool of melt-water: as the slope stopped being a slope, it lost the natural shape predisposed for water running off of it.

Putting one compress on Rei's forehead she spared a moment for the girls who saved her. Both were still lying on their backs, their chests heaving from labored breathing. Leaving one wet cloth to them she turned back to Rei. Pulling down the thick warm trousers to ease the cooling she found out that the miko managed to keep two items beside the warm clothing: her panties and her henshin pen. The latter was tucked away in her boot. Ami tucked a rolled-up parka under the raven-haired girl's head, covered her modesty with an another strip torn off the lab coat and placed the henshin pen in her hand. Then Ami frowned, worrying. Rei's breathing became even, but... She adjusted the compress. She didn't like the noticeable reddening across the front of Rei's body. It was to early for a sunburn to manifest. Looked more like a result of lying prone on the sand heated by sun.

The sounds of a cloth being sucked upon coming from behind her changed to some sort of struggling. Turning back Ami found the rescuers crawling towards the exit on all fours stumbling and helping each other. She tried to help but both the girls waved her away.

"Muscles're stiff like hell," Ranma explained hoarsely. "Don'tcha worry, we'll work it out."

The crawling girls were wincing and cringing with grimaces of pain. Ami imagined how much they had to be hurting. She felt ill. But as they insisted they'll manage she had no reason to object. She took up the medallion, to avoid wasting time. She was going to pinpoint the location of their next missing comrade. This disaster must not repeat! She had to learn aiming the portal precisely.

The two crawling girls, meanwhile, reached the nearest pool, deep and ice-cold. The sounds of water being slurped up greedily could be heard from a long distance. Akane tried to save her dignity and drink by scooping the water by her palm but her hands were too awkward. She followed her husband's example bending down and lapping right from the pool. The water was teeth-achingly cold and relatively clear.

After drinking her full Ranma crawled into the pool and plopped down here with a groan of delight. They both had not recovered yet from the withering heat. Akane tried to follow her example but yowled jerking away, then yowled again as her abused muscles spasmed.

"Ack! It's cold!"

"Well, what did you expect?" Ranma turned onto her back enjoying herself. Akane belatedly realized that her blouse will take far longer to dry than the instantly drying silk. In fact, this property of the fabric was why Ranma so loved silk clothing: with his "luck" of getting splashed several times per day it was, probably, the decisive factor.

Akane crawled backwards out of the pool, then carefully sat up.

"Let me rub you," suggested the redhead standing up, still awkwardly but firmly.

"All right," agreed Akane as she stood up too. Her legs ached something horribly. As well as her derriere. "But let's do it in the hall, there's nothing to throw over these rocks."

Helping each other to keep upright they hobbled up to the pyramid, like two cripples. Inside Ami was working her magic on the medallion while keeping one eye on the unconscious Rei lying supine in only her panties and a slip of cloth. Ranma carefully averted her eyes. But the kaleidoscopic nature of the hall was seemingly mocking her: wherever she looked, her eyes met a reflection of either the entrance or one of the girls. A hint here, a fragment there, no matter are you looking up or down. Embarrassed, she hung her head but was vexed to glimpse a reflection of Rei's breast covered by the piece of cloth only from above. The damned mirror floor. Totally flustered, the redhead started fretting. Luckily she noticed Akane trying to pull her blouse off and hurried to help.

Through slow, careful motions and hissing through her teeth they managed to complete this complex action and wring the blouse almost dry. Akane sighed at the sight of a quite expensive thing turned into a worn rag. Then she slowly, like an ancient hag, lowered herself to the floor, into a prone position. She clenched her teeth. Ranma, barely moving herself, began the execution. To Ami this looked like either a torture or an especially brutal wrestling match. Sitting down on the small of her spouse's back, Ranma wrapped herself around her muscular left leg like a boa, squeezing the appendage in the nook of her elbow while at the same time wrenching it sideways. Akane whimpered through her clenched teeth. Ami looked at them over the medallion in worry. Wasn't this technique too radical? The redhead kept squeezing and wrenching until she pressed her heel into her wife's buttock. Akane kept emitting from time to time half-groaning half-hissing sounds. Then she suddenly noted in a halting voice: "It's strange, the floor is warm."

"More specifically it doesn't have its own temperature," explained Ami, worry evident in her voice. There were tears glinting in the corners of Akane's eyes, her pupils shrunk into dots. She is obviously trying to get some distraction, realized Ami, and it made her shudder. "These surfaces act as a perfect mirror, in other words they are closer to an abstract physical concept than to a matter. Touching them you feel your own body temperature." She turned back to check on Rei. The raven-haired girl was still unconscious lying with her bare back pressed against the said 'abstract physical concept'. It's good the air is cool, thought Ami, to allow enough heat exchange for the recovery from a heat stroke. Otherwise we'd have to carry her outside to lay on the ground, as the floor here acts as a perfect thermal insulator.

Akane yowled. Ami sharply turned to the martial artists. Ranma was done torturing the left leg and sat now wrenching the right one. Akane laid there, her hands outstretched with her fingers in warding gestures telling 'I'm out cold'. Her lips were pursed as if she tried to say 'oo', her eyes rolled up.

"Akane, what's wrong?" the redhead interrupted the torture, worried. "Tell me if it hurts too much!"

The other girl didn't respond.

"Hey, Akane!" Ranma panicked hopping to her wife's head, still awkwardly but swiftly. "Hey! Are you all right!" She slapped slightly at her out cold wife's cheeks.

"Nngh..." Akane's rolled up pupils appeared from under her eyelids, her eyes crossed at first then focusing. Anger distorted her face. "Continue, now! So it's painful, a big deal! Our friends wait for a rescue and here I am, lying immobile!"

The redhead returned to the initial position sitting on the other girl's back and grabbing the leg, there was such a suffering written large on her face like she was forced to beat up infants.

"I, um," Akane added in a quiet voice. "I may yell." Then she barked with a sudden force: "So don't you dare to stop! Got that!"

Ranma sighed heavily as she went working on the leg again. There was no enthusiasm in her movements anymore, just a pure technique.

Akane hissed a couple times like a pinched cat. Ranma eased the pressure. Akane growled, quietly but menacingly. The tortured redhead continued torturing the leg with previous force. Akane held on long and stubbornly but on some problem spot she let out a scream of pure pain. The redhead glanced worriedly but didn't say anything and didn't relent her assault. Akane's breathing was ragged, her fists clenched. Ami saw her pupils were shrunk into dots again. Definitely not good for one's health.

"Hahh... They..." Akane breathed out, "how... long...? Soon...?"

"A few more minutes," replied Ami correctly interpreting the other girl's incoherent babble as a question about her progress on figuring the coordinates of their next missing comrade. "Resources are depleted, we can't afford to aim the portal at an approximate area. I have to improve my methods, to research alternate solutions." She ducked back into her work.

"Good... Aieeeeeee!"

Ranma stopped. "Akane, I know, but..."

"Go... on," the prone girl interrupted her with determination. "Even if I pass out, you go on."

The redhead let out a long, suffering sigh and finished working the leg. Then she turned around and began kneading the bare back crossed with lacy bra straps. Her hands pinched and twisted mercilessly like claws of a bird of prey, with a power that would horrify any normal massage therapist. Alas, the radical hurry called for radical solutions.

Akane made a pitiful squeak and went limp, her head lolling to a side. Ranma continued kneading, grim as a storm cloud. She finished the back, then worked the arms. Finally she carefully rolled her loved one over. Akane's head lolled limply, her eyes were again rolled up. There was a trickle of drool hanging down from her mouth. Ranma carefully slapped her on the cheeks. No reaction. Worried, she grabbed a dried up compress and dashed away in search of a clean pool. It seems the effort of kneading Akane served also to return herself to normal, Ami noted absent-mindedly as she was briefly distracted from her task. Come on, what else... Ah, that's it! She renewed tapping the keys with a tripled vigor as she began compiling the final formula.

When the redhead returned with a fresh compress Akane was already up vigorously squatting and stretching.

"How are you?" asked Ranma trying to hide the worry in her voice.

"You're ge... eee.. nius!" Akane responded merrily, eeping when she made a split. "There's no stiffness, I'm moving absolutely... aieee... freely!" She finished the stretching with an energetic three-meter jump exploding at the top of the apex with a flurry of kicks accompanied with more pained sounds. "The pain is quite tolerable, we can go rescuing!" She turned to Ami questioningly.

"A moment!" Ami's hands fluttering over the keyboard blurred in a rapid motion, sounding more like spilled peas.

"Well, you could trample me for a while," said Ranma laying down face down.

Akane pulled her boots off and went trampling with her bare feet over the prone girl's back and legs putting her entire weight into the kneading and twisting on her toes. The redhead emitted a half-suffering sigh of relief and went limp lying there like a happy jello. Akane kept trampling her unresisting body for awhile, then hoped off.

"How did you recover so easily?" she asked with envy in her voice.

"Pushing yourself way past your limits is an art like any other," replied Ranma in a happily relaxed but still lecturing voice that made Akane bristle a bit. "I'll teach you later..." She let out a sigh, still lying limp like a wet noodle, her cheek against the floor.

"It's ready," said Ami. "Of the five left four are in the same world, this allows us to aim the portal with an error as little as three meters. With the fifth one it's... complicated."

"Go on, open it!" Ranma jumped up to her feet with a suddenness of a jack-in-the-box.

"Here," Ami handed the medallion to Akane. "Press 'affirmation', then..."

"No, I can't!" Akane tried to refuse.

"Too bad," Ami didn't remove her outstretched hand with the medallion. "My account is suspended for the next three days for overdrafting my quota. Any commands from me would be ignored."

"How's that?" Akane grew suddenly alarmed.

"Well, I had prevented the portal from closing by staying in its aperture," Ami reminded her. "The safety system won't allow the portal to close while it crosses a sapient being. But someone had to carry the responsibility for the expended energy. As I understand it, a non-user would be pushed out of the portal plane with a force field of increasing strength. But as I am an Ahs-lord, it was just detracted from my quota..." Then she added under her breath: "The clothing of the sapient beings doesn't count, though."

Ranma was already aware about the naked heel sticking out of a strange hole in Ami's shoe. Now she understood it. She remembered this just in case.

"It's so expensive to open portals?" Akane grew worried. She hadn't forgotten that materializing the medallion cost nine tenths of their quotas from _both_ ·of them.

"No, no," Ami reassured her. "It's because energy consumption of an open portal grows exponentially with time." She quickly tapped something in and placed the medallion in Akane's hand. "Come on, press it. Of the four of them, this one moves quickly, we'll have to correct the position again if you dawdle."

"Moves?" Akane asked with suspicion as she pressed the button. "Why is that?"

"Attention, opening the portal in aperture five," proclaimed the mechanical voice. "Performing correction by the vertical axis with accordance to the protocol thirty eight: the specified cross-section is below the ground level."

The portal opened into a mist-veiled tropical swamp or a sparse mangrove forest. The kaleidoscopic hall replied by turning greener. Akane peeked around leaning out of the portal. Black tree trunks sporting stunted crowns glinted wetly stretching in all directions and disappearing in the humid haze. There was such a rotten stench rising from the mess of floating plants heated by the sun that she recoiled for a moment.

"Well, I don't see..." She fell silent, a disbelieving horror on her face.

"What's wrong?" Ranma instantly grew wary joining her at the portal.

"It's not she who moves quickly," Akane squeezed out swallowing the oncoming tears. "It's the crocodile in whose stomach she is."

A ridgy back flashed again through the green carpet. Ami clasped a hand over her mouth, her eyes widening in horror.

"A moment," Ranma said in a too-even, dead voice. "Just a moment, I'll get this thing..."

"Gee whoa, you beast!" a peppy girl's voice suddenly reached from beyond the portal. "Gee whoa I s-s-aid!"

"Minako-chan?" whispered Akane still not believing her hearing.

"Hah, curiosier and capriciousier," continued the invisible Minako. "Yonder amidst the swamps there stays a mirror. Comes a maiden on her frisky— Gee whoa, will ya...! On her frisky steed, looks at herself n the... Oh the ho-orro-o-or!" Her voice gained a theatrically-overblown exasperation. "Oh my hair! My poor hair! Even a kappa wouldn't look at me with this mop! I could star in a film about the swamp thing!"

"Minako-chan!" Akane shouted in joy as she leaned dangerously out to bend over the portal edge. "We thought a crocodile ate you!"

"Is that safe?" Ranma asked worriedly pointing at Akane pressing her chest to the aperture edge while holding at the wall with her arm. From the inside the portal was placed in a receding arch, but on the outside, as the redhead remembered, it prsented a plane, thin to the point of invisibility, hanging in the air. "Won't she cut herself?" By some reason she couldn't stop remembering Ami's shoe.

"What a relief!" Ami let out a pent up breath, her face practically lighting up. "Um, no. The portal edge is surrounded by a force field, it's like a perfect plane framed with wire a couple millimeters thick. It could only pose danger if you run into it at high speed.

Her worry sated, Ranma leaned out too. But first she carefully feeled the edge. True, it felt like a thin wire.

From the back, the portal presented a mirror. A naked Minako riding a crocodile sat there examining herself in reflection. Ranma boggled, then turned away blushing. She tried to banish the image of the blond out of her mind - to no avail. The hips parted wide straddling the thick neck of the reptile, the feet tucked in so that only the knees touch the water. Some dirty rope stretching to the end of the muzzle clutched in the right hand while the left arm is held high, its elbow to the side while the hand holding the henshin pen lifts the tangled hair making the firm breast to rise enciti...

Ranma recoiled shaking her head in desperation. Well, she herself had a thing or two to flaunt. She herself was adept at a technique of martial dumbfounding known informally as "tit-fu". But being hit so unexpectedly, out of the blue... Who could have known that Minako was practicing there polishing her most lethal techniques? Ranma tried to recover from the blow but failed. These perfect curves, these widely parted hips... ARRRGH!

"I'm a married man, cats claw me!"

Akane growled, quietly but unmistakably.

"I what... I did say that aloud?" asked the redhead, her voice weak.

"There hadn't yet been born a crocodile," Minako's voice reached Ranma whose eyes were shut tightly, "that could devour Aino Minako, the avatar of love! Hey, do you have anything to capture me for posterity? I so want a memento of my greatest triumph."

"I don't do pornography," Akane replied with a vitriol as she pulled inside leaving the "damn pervert" to show off alone. She looked at the squinting Ranma cringing in apprehension and sighed.

"I have a video camera," said Ami as she in turn leaned out. "But are you sure? Such a tape getting into the wrong hands..."

"How could I not be!" Minako sounded offended. "How many times do you get a chance to break a real, wild crocodile in an unequal contest? Bring your camera on!"

"But be brief," Ami warned her as she ran for the camera into the corner where she had her appliances stashed. "We have to rescue four more people! All right, filming now!"

Akane leaned out from the other side, against her better judgement. It was as she feared: Minako flaunted herself shamelessly taking most unchaste poses, she urged the crocodile to turn to and from while shouting "Omnom, fetch!" At the close inspection the end of the muzzle turned out to be tied off with a haphazard rope of twisted clothing, the madwoman holding onto its other end. The most scandalous was the bra hanging from the jaws to the left.

In the end she attempted to caracole on the croc while standing on bent legs. She was partially successful. The desperate animal reared up tearing the leash from the blond's hand as she held it with a dramatic fleur instead of holding it firmly. Minako splash-landed in the dirty water upside down as the long suffering animal swiftly swam away, its path visible for a while by the stirring of the vegetable carpet.

"Omnom, how could you!" Minako shouted after it dramatically after she surfaced, all covered with algae and weeds. "I thought we were friends!" She dove back under to avoid tearing through the dense vegetation, resurfacing at the portal. "You know, it's seriously ecchi to leave a girl nude by purloining all her—" At this point her monologue towards the receding reptile was cut short by the irate Akane who plucked her out of the swamp almost tearing her arm out in the process. The algae-smeared blond landed on the mirror floor with a smack. The portal immediately closed and there was suddenly much less green in the kaleidoscope of mirrors. And more skin tones.

"I'll, um, go scout outside," Ranma proclaimed after some coughing. She was carefully looking straight forward. "To assess the situation and stuff." She hastily left the hall.

"This swamp stench is so disgusting," Akane stated tactlessly and unfriendly as she stepped away from Minako and the widening pool of muddy water around her.

"I know, I know," Minako replied airily. "And my hair!" she added in an almost crying voice. "It pains me to even think about it! I know I'm asking much," she turned her gaze from Akane to Ami. "But isn't there a pool of clean water? And a comb?"

"There's unfortunately no comb," replied Akane, still unfriendly. "But the pools are aplenty," She pointed with her eyes towards the exit, there was a clear gloating in her voice. "Choose any pool of melt-water you like. It's icy! Maybe you'll chill down a little."

"Thanks," said Minako, completely unaffected by the barb. Then she went towards the exit, walking straight and completely unashamed. This caused Akane to feel an unhealthy mix of indignation and envy. At the exit the blond stopped turning around: "Akane.. I'm sorry if I was kind of a jerk. I think the testosterone got in my head." She disappeared outside, followed by Ranma's startled exclamation.

"She probably meant adrenaline," noted Ami as she handed Akane the medallion. "Are you ready?"

"Yes, just... Rrrrranma!"

"I'm here!" The completely flustered redhead returned into the hall, but not before peeking cautiously from beyond the corner. "I wasn't looking, honest!" she blurted when she walked up to her wife.

"Let's go!" Akane fiercely depressed the button.

The portal opened into a green twilight of a dense forest. They were greeted by the sweltering heat of jungles saturated with calls and warbles of invisible animals... In the thorny bushes ahead there, it seems, were more thorns than leaves. But this wasn't what attracted their attention. A naked, badly scratched Makoto was tearing through these bushes swearing like a dock worker. She was diving and twisting to dodge the thorny branches reaching at her from everywhere, trying to sink their thorns into her nude body like some ravenous claws ready to ravage her full breasts, her...

"Gack!" Ranma hastily closed her eyes shut hiding her head between her arms. Akane's eye twitched.

"Mako-chan!" she shouted. "What happened? Where's your clothing?"

"Guys!" Makoto exclaimed in joy. "Oh, what a relief!" A smile of sincere joy bloomed on her face. Akane winced in sympathy as she saw that the tall brunette was literally head to toe covered with deep scratches many of which were bleeding. "All my clothing is there!" Makoto pointed somewhere to the left. "But more importantly, my henshin pen! These red buggers won't let me get close or I'd have transformed already."

"I'm afraid magic doesn't work here." Ami was quick to disappoint her. "Minako had to defeat that crocodile as is, in civilian."

"A crocodile?" Makoto boggled. Then she started struggling through the brambles towards the portal twisting between the thorny branches that were inflicting new scratches as she went. Her unbound hair hanging below her shoulders kept catching. "How did she do that? I mean Ranma-kun or Akane-chan could easily beat a croc. But one of us?"

"Well, I suppose you could manage such or even grater feat when you want to live," grudgingly admitted Akane as she started to tear through to meet her. To think of it, the beast was around five meters weighing probably half a ton. Defeating such a thing with Minako's training is really a heroic deed.

The harsh reality was quick to remind her that she was still undressed, walking around in only her bra and mini-skirt. The thorns here were dire. Akane eeped, then concentrated directing her ki to reinforce her body like she did performing the Blasting Weak Point technique.(note 1) While it helped so-so against rocky blast fragments, it proved amazingly effective now. The thorns were just sliding off her body. Akane hurried towards Makoto intent of breaking the branches in the other girl's way... And almost lost her bra as it was jerked aside caught on the claw-like thorns. Akane twirled freeing her article of underwear but immediately heard a sound of ripping fabric from below. Her miniskirt became micro.

"Why, you!" Akane went breaking the branches left and right making a wide corridor in the boughy bushes. The long, curved thorns prickled her palms like needles overcoming even the ki reinforcement. It just made her work harder growling unflattering things in the address of the obnoxious plants.

"Thank you, Akane-chan," said Makoto making the last meters with some dignity through the breach made by her friend. "But we still have to get my henshin pen somehow. And my clothing, if possible. It's too awkward. And the poor Ranma-kun..."

Akane cast a sidelong glance at Ranma who still stood there cringing, her eyes shut tightly, her face red. Akane sighed. What a rotten luck. And it wasn't even his fault.

"Rei-chan!" Makoto noticed the girl lying unconscious in a corner. "What happened to her?"

"Don't worry," Ami hastily reassured her. "Just a heat stroke, she should wake up soon."

A shrill, almost ultrasonic shriek sounded from the outside.

"What? Who?" Makoto tensed.

"Don't worry," Akane told her. "It's Minako, washing up in a pool of melt-water."

"Indeed?" Makoto cast a side glance at the exit. "I think I'll go keep her company. These scratches are burning. Well, I'm also excited to know about the crocodile." She went towards the exit.

"You can unsquint now," Akane told her husband with a sigh. "There are no naked girls here."

The redhead cautiously opened one eye. Then she boggled staring at Akane.

"There's, ah, a hole in your bra," she noted with embarrassment as she reddened more. "And your skirt..." She caught herself staring and diverted her eyes: it was wrong place and time. The spouse's reaction could be explosive and unpredictable.

Akane hastily grabbed her blouse and pulled it on lightning-fast. So it was this she felt all this time as something being wrong! "Pervert," she said softly with a grumpy fondness.

"Akane-chan," Ami reminded her. "Stand in the aperture, the portal is going to close!"

"Right, we still have to return Makoto's things!" exclaimed Akane as she stood with her one foot here and her other foot there. "But there are some unknown 'red buggers'..."

"I'll go get it!" injected Ranma as she hastily pulled warm pants on over her black ones: she herself wasn't afraid of the thorns but she didn't want to rip her silk clothes. "Just point a direction and I'll deal with any buggers, red or purple!" She finished donning the parka.

"It's somewhere that way." Akane pointed.

"Yeah, just a moment!" The redhead bounded away over the brambles. She didn't go far, though. Her swearing could be heard from some forty meters away, along with the sound of bushes rustling. A dozen seconds later she returned rebounding from a tree, the bundle of Makoto's clothing tucked under her arm. She didn't walk in, though. She dropped the bundle and started throwing the articles of clothing to Akane one by one shaking them off vigorously.

"What are you doing?" asked Akane as she kept catching the things and throwing them further in to avoid them contacting the pool of muddy water in front of the portal.

"Ants!" explained Ranma. "Red, big like cockro... ouch!" She hit her leg with her other foot. "Buggers!" After she threw all things in, the redhead patted herself over and ducked through the portal. Akane removed her foot and it closed immediately, the thorny bushes replaced with her reflection. Ranma shed her parka and pulled the warm pants off. "The little bastards got some bite. How come that they haven't devoured Makoto while she was unconscious? The rock she arrived on fell right into their hill. Imagine them going apeshit at that! You had to see it, the bump is some three meters high! And wide as our doujo. Oh, here is the Jupiter pen." She held out for Akane a green pen with a large golden five-pointed star at its top, a circle with symbol reminiscent of number 4 adorning its center.

"Let's get the next one," said Akane as she handed the medallion to Ami. "It goes so well so far I'm afraid to jinx it."

"Then why are you mentioning it?" Ranma asked with sarcastically with a half-lidded stare.

"It's ready." Ami handed the medallion back. "Be aware that she's on the night side of the planet. It's dark there. On the positive side, this one hadn't moved since I located her, the coordinates are static."

"You tell me like I never teleported from day into night," grumbled Ranma. Then added, even quieter: "I hope at least this one isn't naked."

Akane pressed the button. The portal turned from a mirror into an arched square of darkness, the hall dimming considerably.

"It's a forest again. Such huge roots..." commented Ranma as she moved outside gradually disappearing as she receded from the portal. "I don't see her, where should she be?"

"In theory, straight ahead," replied Ami. "Must be at thirty plus-minus three meters from the portal."

"Got it!" Ranma disappeared behind a massive dark shadow. The darkness was eerily silent, broken only by chirping of some insects. Akane stood watching warily, her eyes gradually getting used to the darkness. But there was nothing to look at. The light falling out of the portal made visible a tangle of some gnarly roots and a couple nearby trees of immense girth, with far outstanding buttresses. Ranma had disappeared beyond one of these. The light barely reached to the back side of the portal, it was a realm of primeval darkness pierced only by chains of wan lights. Akane strained her poorly trained ki senses as one couldn't rely on their sight here. She didn't get anything distinct, only a vague sense of danger, not too close but deadly for the one who let their guard down. The hairs on her neck stood on ends making her listen so strenuously that she started hearing Rei's breathing and Ami's clothes rustling. There was not a sound from Ranma, as one should expect.

"Gack!" suddenly Ranma's voice sounded from the darkness. "Hotaru-chan, why are you naked?"

Her danger sense was jolted, the "hidden menace" turning into "rapidly and inexorably approaching one". Ranma surely felt that, thought Akane. Then, right away, she realized he didn't. Getting into awkward situation always throws him off the track.

"Get back, now!" she yelled. "Both of you! Something is coming!"

"Hotaru-chan, run towards the light!" shouted the invisible Ranma. "I'll grab your things!"

Akane bit her lip. The danger was closing in too fast. Now she could tell many separate sources of ki emitting that utilitarian killing intent devoid of anger, which is characteristic of hunting predators.

A thin form of the young girl dashed from behind the tree, a vague light shadow against the black. Hotaru tried to run but kept stumbling on the uneven roots, her eyes blinded by the light from the portal, not used to walk barefooted. A bear-sized lump of darkness shot after her. Time slowed for Akane. In the light from the portal she could see the glint of Hotaru's eyes wide from horror and of the fangs that would make a sabertooth proud. The girl stumbled and started falling, slowly in comparison to the predator flying at her with a swift grace.

Akane dashed forward, slower than she wanted: her left foot slid across the mirror floor as the alien entity ignored her instinctive effort to increase the friction using ki. She lost a lot of time but at last her right foot pushed properly propelling Akane forward. The falling Hotaru floated by, the dark beast coming closer. It was already correcting its lunge, already reacting to parry the sudden menace with its furry claw. But it was hopelessly slow. Akane twisted to avoid the huge claws floating slowly on an intercept course, she ducked under the gaping maw. Then she put all her strength, all her inertia into a simple straight punch. The recoil, both physical and ki, shook her body throwing her back with a cry of pain. Her muscles weren't fully recovered and she felt it. But the predator fared much worse. With a crack of broken breastbone the bulk was thrown back like a ragdoll. Hitting a tree with a dull sound the black beast ricocheted to the side landing somewhere in the darkness with a meaty thud.

"Come on, Hotaru-chan," Akane helped the girl to stand up and dragged her in. She was surprised to find Ami standing with one foot outside. "What—"

"It was going to close! You'd be cut off!"

Akane felt a chill along her spine.

"Ranma! What are you doing there!" She took the place of a plug, sharply aware how much being tied to a narrow line limited her freedom of movement. What if another one lunges at her? What if a pack? The unknown predator was amazingly swift for its size. While she alone covered an opening five meters wide and more than that in height! They could just leap over her!

Ami and Hotaru pulled further away behind her. A silence fell. Suddenly it was pierced by Ranma's swearing and a sound of a powerful blow. An invisible beast roared in pain and anger and was responded by its brethren. The return roar rolled through the darkness like a roll-call. There should be dozens of them, thought Akane, even if two thirds were echoes!

"Rrrrrrranmaaa!"

A resounding hit, an enraged roar, two more hits, a dull sound of a fallen body, a chorus of menacing roars.

"I just can't find it!" the invisible Ranma shouted, her voice full of frustration. "It's dark here like in a demon's asshole! And these buggers keep getting in my way!"

"What it?" shouted Akane. "Come on while I still got quota left!"

"Her henshin pen! Why you!" A few more resounding hits sounded followed by such a many-voiced roar like there was a huge pack of these things out there. Which was probably true.

"But I don't have a henshin pen," quietly corrected Hotaru. "I transform on my own. Well, by imagining and wishing it.

"Really?" Akane said, surprised. Then she yelled into the darkness: "Did you hear that? She never had one! Stop searching for what's not there and run back!"

"Aw, shucks!" replied Ranma with relief. A second later she rebounded from a nearby tree zipping past Akane with a bundle of clothing under one arm. The short-haired girl stepped back and the pack of charging sabertooths was replaced with her reflection.

"So, we have two to go," said Akane as she handed the medallion to Ami. "Let's hurry and finish this." She took the bundle from the hands of Ranma who stood with her eyes shut tightly. "Why were you sitting there in the nude?" she asked Hotaru as she helped the young girl to dress.

"It's because of _those_ ," said Hotaru shivering slightly. "I laid there quietly like a mouse, on top of the rock where I woke up. They were walking below, sniffing, tearing something." Akane noticed that the warm pants were shredded. "A scary place," concluded Hotaru. "But so beautiful. All these lights in the darkness." She smiled at the sole pleasant memory. "It wouldn't be so bad if not for _those_ ·stalking in the dark. The rock was cold but I pulled the parka under myself. I mean, before I realized I must not make a sound. But the centipedes..." She shuddered.

"Centipedes?" asked Akane, already mentally recoiling at the imagined picture.

"Un." Hotaru nodded. "This long." She parted her hands half a meter wide. "They kept falling from somewhere up. Sometimes they crawled over me."

Akane turned green.

"No, no," the girl hastily reassured her. "They don't bite. And they are really beautiful. So stylish, flowing... It was just unexpected. One suddenly crawled up on my back, it was very hard not too scream. I think I bit through my lip." She demonstrated her lip, not bit through but a bit swollen, with clearly visible bruises from her teeth. "Then I saw what a critter it was. Turns out they tickle like crazy. That one crawled up my shoulder, hung its front third off and started sniffing around, it looked so funny." She smiled weakly.

"I'm glad you made friends," Akane said diplomatically with a strained smile. She wasn't sure she'd be able to refrain from screaming if some disgusting things started creeping over her bare skin. "Ranma, you can open your eyes. She is decent."

Ranma cautiously cracked one eye open, then another one.

"It's ready," Ami handed the medallion to Akane. "But you should know..." She hesitated. "We have to be prepared for the worst. Michiru may swim like a fish, but falling unconscious..."

Akane pressed the button.

"Attention, opening the portal in aperture five," proclaimed the mechanical voice. "Warning, the ground level is unstable. Activating the mechanism of dynamic correction of the vertical coordinate according the protocol thirty eight."

The portal opened into darkness, a resilient stream of warm sea air greeting them. The bright tropical stars were visible even to their eyes not fully accustomed to the dark. But suddenly these were obscured by a wall of darkness rising higher and higher. Akane shouted a warning, but the wave started inexplicably receding becoming lower and lower until it disappeared completely. Akane blinked in confusion: "What was that?"

"The portal has dynamically corrected its vertical coordinate," explained Ami. "Simply speaking, it rose to pass over the wave."

Akane and Ranma bent over to look outside. The dark water was several meters below them, the next wave was coming but its top wouldn't even reach the opening. The portal didn't dignify them with moving back down.

"He-e-ey, Is anyone alive out there!" shouted Ranma into the darkness.

"There is!" a overjoyed voice of Michiru reached them. "I'm here!"

"Michiru-mama!" happily exclaimed Hotaru as she ran up to the portal.

"Swim here, the portal is stationary!" Ami warned as she walked up to the edge. The four of them stood there in a row, the salty wind ruffling their hair and making them push against its resilient pressure.

Soon Michiru's head could be seen in the waves, surrounded by a pale blue glow. Accompanied by joyful shouts of the rescuers, she swam under the portal... Where she stopped, sometimes rising as close as a couple meters, sometimes sinking to a good half dozen below.

"We'll have to hang down," said Ranma as she turned to Akane. "Maybe even holding each other." She was starting to have some vague apprehension. It was hard to see in the darkness, but...

"Or to wait for the next big wave," said Michiru. "I can float here for hours, the water is warm."

"We can't keep the portal open for long," Akane rejected that idea in an apologizing voice.

"But we don't have a rope," added Ranma.

"Attention, a big wave is coming!" warned Ami. "Michiru-san, you can grab at the edge safely but it is relatively thin, try to make sure you are not pressed against it! And the portal will rise with the wave!

Michiru sized the wave glancing back, then she backed away slightly with a couple of powerful strokes. The rising wave lifted her higher even than the bottom of the opening carrying her onto the portal. She swam forward using the gained momentum to practically throw herself into the escaping portal as she pushed against the floor with her straightened arms, one of which was clutching her henshin pen, and pulling one leg up to the edge before the wave fell from under her. She didn't even have to grab at Akane's helpfully outstretched arm.

Ranma realized, at last, what the apprehension was. But it was too late! The emerald-haired nymph, who emerged so elegantly from the sea waves, straightened up flexibly as she pulled her other leg in, her waist swaying enticingly in the process. The salty moisture was falling in drops from the emerald tresses sticking to her shoulders, was rolling down her slender nude body streaming in tiny rivulets over her supple breasts... The untimely closing portal turned into a mirror reflecting the spellbinding perfection of forms from a different perspective while the side wall of the arch, being yet another mirror, added one more angle. The redhead made a strangled noise turning around in panic as her wife's glare was burrowing into her.

Minako and Makoto entered the hall, so engrossed in discussion they completely forgot about their nudity. The tantalizing curves of the peppy blond contrasted against the softly swaying talents of the athletic brunette covered head to toe in scratches emphasizing...

"Gah!" Ranma twirled away. In vain as the kaleidoscope of mirrors was reflecting everything, _everything_ , making the random glimpses even more titillating, attracting her eyes like a magnet... Damn it, they are friends! He shouldn't think about them _that_ ·way! But the treacherous eyes lived a life of their own like they were possessed catching more and more details he absolutely didn't want to know about these girls! Ranma shut her eyes tightly but it didn't help! The trained observancy rebelled turning against its master, the unwanted details kept popping up from the memory like gas bubbles from a soda, pushing, popping, being replaced by different ones.

Akane is looking, Ranma grabbed at the last argument. Stubbornly, persistently she kept displacing the flickering of unchaste pictures with a mental image of a mallet approaching inexorably. It was hard, but in the end she prevailed.

Ranma straightened up. Beet-red, breathing heavily, but finally in control. She wasn't planning to open her eyes for at least a hour, even if...

Alas, the infamous luck was still with her. Rei, who had been lying there like an article of furniture, suddenly jumped onto her feet with a yell. Ranma opened her eyes in surprise. The cloth slid off her and Ranma spent several seconds watching the erratical jiggling of the raven-haired miko's breasts as the girl was jumping around on one foot yelling and frantically pulling her panties down.

Ranma recoiled in desperation, turning away, _away!_ , losing her balance. Tangled in her own legs she fell flat on the floor, face down. She started rising on her elbows but suddenly found Minako's and Makoto's legs right in front of her face! The redhead lowered her eyes in panic, looking straight into the floor... Her eyes widened, then rolled up and she went limp, falling back to the floor with a dull thud.

"Pervert," Akane said in a tired voice without any conviction.

"What's wrong with her?" asked Minako sounding surprised.

"With _him!_ " Akane snapped at the blond. "Be so kind, make an effort to look where are you standing! And think of what did he see in the reflection!"

"Oh!" Minako realized with an uncalled for enthusiasm as she bent down to the unconscious redhead whose head rested almost between her feet. "Well, a mirror floor that reflects everything standing on it, upside down... It was an interesting turn of events." She pulled at Ranma's shoulder. The red-haired head rolled listlessly making visible a small stream of blood running down from her nose.

"Don't look at me like that!" said Rei. "I was suddenly bitten by something!" She shook her panties. A huge red ant fell out. "I'd like to look at you if you were bitten by a thing like that in your private parts!" She rubbed the inside of her thigh. "Ouch."

And only Makoto had the decency to blush.

(シーンブレイク)

January 09, 2012. Translated April 14, 2012

 **Author's notes:**

 **1**  
"Blasting Weak Point" is "Bakusai Tenketsu", Ryouga's signature technique.

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— J. St.C. Patrick  
— Orphus users (21 bugs so far)


	10. Stuck!

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled v1.5**

 **Chapter 10  
Stuck!**

(シーンブレイク)

"..not that I thought.."

"..we all are guilty to some degree.."

"..somehow to forget that one of us isn't exactly a girl.."

Ranko was slowly floating up from the depths of a tacky, viscous nightmare. The voices reaching her were dull, vague, at times becoming close and distinct then receding again. She was tearing towards the light anxious to get out of this endless bewitchery, this phantasm of uncontrollable attraction towards her teammates that had suddenly consumed her — making her to cheat on Akane in her mind, to think such burning thoughts about other girls! That must have been a nightmare. Of course! She's a girl, one of them, what took her?

"..yet five bras for the eight of us. But to wear in parkas in this heat..."

"Four. Ranma is again without."

"Three. Who did count Hotaru, she's double A."

"All right, all right. We've covered almost everyone, now if Akane gives hers to Michiru—"

"It won't work! Mine has a hole in it!" That was the voice of Akane, her beloved wife.

Ranko's smoothly flowing thoughts ground to a halt. How could a girl be a wife of an another girl? They are both girls, right?

It turns out it wasn't. It turns out that that nightmare was true! So who is she, then? The girl felt suddenly ill. She remembered she is really a guy, Saotome Ranma. This made her... him... nauseated. Fighting the dizziness she moaned shaking her head.

"Look! She woke up!"

"It seems I'll have to dress warmly." Michiru's voice was somehow detached like she wasn't completely there.

"Wait." That was Makoto's voice. "Let me make you a bikini from that lab coat. We don't need compresses anymore, we could use the sleeves."

Ranma carefully opened her eyes still hoping it was just a nightmare.

She was greeted by a sight of undressed girls standing around and looking at her from above. They somehow managed to stretch a half of clothing necessary for seven people. Only Hotaru stayed dressed: small even for her twelve years, she couldn't share with anyone. Well, Akane was fully dressed too, if one ignored her ripped mini-skirt making her panties clearly visible. The others looked like an amateurish harem on a promenade. Ami sat at the wall doing something with the medallion, clad in shoes, her traditional mini wrap skirt and a bra. Rei sported her blouse, too short to cover the panties. A scraggly-haired, disheveled Minako, bare-footed like Rei, was swimming in Makoto's jeans and blouse. The brunette, clad in only her underwear and warm boots, was working on Michiru while covering the emerald-haired woman with her body. Ineffectively. Ranma hastily shifted her gaze away from Makoto's scratch-covered back. Right, that was what she shifted her gaze away from.

The redhead shook the cobwebs off her mind. She stood up making a point of looking in other direction and casting wary glances at Akane. But the shor-haired girl, it seems, wasn't angry at all.

"What did I miss?"

"Nothing important," Akane said flatly, with a hidden subtext that elaborating upon this topic further was undesirable. "We've been discussing what do we do next."

"This place is like a mouse-trap," Rei voiced their mutual concern. "If that knight returns or some other things creep in on us, we're done for!"

"So we have to move somewhere we wouldn't be defenseless!" Makoto said, in such tired voice it was clear they had been going over this topic many times. "Which means to move home where we'd be able to transform. Not to mention the bad feeling I have about all these scratches itching too much. They may inflame."

"Itching?" Rei responded snarkily. "At least your whole body doesn't burn like scalded." She winced in pain. "And I feel some nasty chills..."

"A thermal burn in the front, a sunburn in the back," affirmed Ami. "This is far from harmless, you're at risk of developing a fever, severe enough to lose your consciousness. You all need to transform soon." She shifted her gaze to Minako. "Especially you. There are abrasions all over the inner side of your thighs, you spent around two hours with these submerged in a literal soup of pathogenic bacteria. Not to mention it getting in your eyes and everywhere on your mucosae."

"It's probably when I slipped off that tree," admitted Minako. "Well, Omnom-kun didn't have gentlest skin either. You say that like I've caught some leprosy!"

"You very well could have!" Ami shouted, outraged at such thoughtlessness. "Do you have you any idea what a dangerous place a tropical swamp is ?"

"Of course I do!" Minako was surprised. "There are crocodiles there!" She stared in confusion at Ami who looked even more outraged, then added with less confidence: "Umm, and snakes?"

"Bacteria!" Ami shouted advancing on the blonde who started backing away. "Incurable diseases that eat away at your brain making you a slobbering idiot! Parasites! Microscopic worms that make themselves at home in your eyes and devour them from inside until you turn blind!" She let out a noisy breath making an effort to calm down. "That's not counting a simple vaginal infection with probability close to one."

Minako turned green.

"We... When could we get where we can transform?" she squeezed out.

"I have found a way to open a portal to Earth... To _our_ ·Earth," Ami said in a distracted tone as she looked over the medallion screen. "But there's a catch. Or, more precisely, two. First, we could return only to the place where we fought that unknown enemy—"

"By the way, who is he?" Ranma interrupted her. "Could you find it out using this thing?"

"He is an Ahs user level six or higher." Ami sighed. "There is no way to get more information. We have little access, with our level seven. Everything concerning more privileged users is classified for us. We couldn't even find his name.

"I see," Ranma replied grimly. "More privileged means smaller number, as I understand."

"Exactly. Now for us returning home. It would be one-way as there is no transport node in our world anymore. While opening the portal from an arbitrary point is theoretically possible, it requires access level four. Which means, one of the three infected ones must stay here until the rescue operation is over.

"Me 'n Akane will stay, no question here," Ranma agreed hastily while the others were still absorbing the news. "You'll probably have to stay too, to find us a way and stuff."

"Are you nuts?" Akane exploded. "She's defenseless! Both you and me could survive without the Senshi magic, but what would _she_ ·do if she is attacked? Or if she has to dodge something? Or, say, jump down into the forest from that cliff to evade an enemy?"

This made Ranma stop and think.

"That's not what we should think about," objected Ami. "We should think how to get Usagi back! I'll survive somehow." She tried to put up a brave front but it was obvious the perspective depicted by Akane scared her. What if animals really come out of the forest at night? The cliff wouldn't stop a hungry and determined predator.

"Wait," said Ranma. "We'd need the medallion on our way, right? So we'll be taking it with us." She started straightening her curled fingers one by one. "Second, you wouldn't be able to keep up with us, right?" Ami nodded. "Third, without the medallion you couldn't do squat anyway, right?"

"Right," agreed Ami. "So you propose that I return to Earth?"

"And sit there, as Mercury, at a safe distance," confirmed Ranma. "If we fail to make tails and ends of some mind-bending mumbo-jumbo we'll open the portal — you'll teach Akane how to do it — and you'll come here and help while I give you cover."

"An excellent plan," agreed Ami. "However... That's it! No, I'm afraid it's not that easy."

"What do you mean?" Minako grew wary. "You go with us to Earth to wait there while they are rescuing. What's more to this? Let's go already!"

"I think I know," Rei said, wincing as she made an awkward movement. "A totally demolished mountain range, a chunk of tropical forest of unknown origin... And then we suddenly emerge amidst it, pretty and not a bit suspicious."

"Aw, bugger!" Ranma swore. "Well, maybe they didn't notice? It's a middle of nowhere after all, not a soul for hundreds of kilometers around. It'll take them some time to figure it wasn't an earthquake, then more time for someone to come check it. We'll be long finished and gone when they do."

"Where exactly is that place?" asked Hotaru. "Is it In China? I'm a bit lost here."

"Alas, it isn't in China," replied Ami. "It is in Russia, unfortunately."

"Why unfortunately?" Akane asked, still unaware of the implications.

"It's a nuclear power," explained Ami. "Dozens of satellites, complex sensor networks ever on watch for a sudden attack."

"I heard it all got rusted to the ground?" Makoto asked with uncertainty in her voice.

"Far from every thing," replied Ami. "Which only makes it worse. There are undoubtedly gaps in the coverage of the tracking systems. This would make the people manning them jumpy and suspicious."

"And then something goes kaaaa-boom," Minako finished for her grimly. "Right in the middle of their territory." She plopped down to the floor wrapping her arms around her knees and proceeded to sit there — clearly imagining in graphic detail as various bacilli and worms gnaw at her from inside.

"Exactly." There was a tired hopelessness in Ami's voice. "So we'd step out of the portal to meet face to face with army reconnaisance. Supported by special forces and possibly bomber planes."

"And someone's twitchy finger on the button that launches rockets aimed at the alien anomaly," Minako poured more black paint as she lowered her head in total defeat hiding her face in her knees.

"So then, we better stay here?" suggested Makoto.

"And how do you think we protect ourselves against any serious threat?" Rei inquired angrily. "Ranma and Akane will be gone, we will stay here to fend for ourselves, then comes some dinosaur..."

"We could make a fire in the opening?" Makoto wasn't giving up, disliking to feel like a helpless burden.

"And who would be climbing down the cliff to get logs? Into the forest probably swarming with dinosaurs?"

"You don't think we can hurl some dinosaur back?" grumbled Minako.

"Your victory over that crocodile got in your head!" Rei's temper flared. "Dinosaurs could be ten times bigger! And they can run!" Her voice was gradually losing confidence. "Very fast... Right, Ami?"

"We don't have any means of first aid," Ami reminded them. "We were incredibly lucky that nobody have been wounded. We cannot afford any risk, even a slightest one."

"So what do we do?" asked Makoto crossing her arms.

"Is the portal tied to one fixed spot?" asked Ranma. "Or could it be shifted around some?"

"There's tolerance of several hundred meters," replied Ami. She tapped something in quickly. "In fact it could be opened in any point of an area corresponding to our island of terrestial landscape."

"Excellent!" Ranma exclaimed, clearly glad to hear this. "It means they cannot block us exit and ambush us until they gather a whole army of men! If we jump out and immediately close the portal—"

"What are you planning?" Akane asked with suspicion and worry.

"Well, there'd be the forest that disappeared from here?"

"In theory, yes," agreed Ami. "So far everything points at an equal exchange of spacetime fragments."

"So we can disembark unnoticed!" Ranma elaborated with enthusiasm. "We open it, I jump out, make sure than there's no one—"

"Let's first find what do we need to rescue Usagi," Akane interrupted her. "And how long would it take. And only then start making plans."

"I'm afraid it would take many days," Ami said blindsiding everyone. "The laws of interrelation between the worlds... Well, simply saying, the worlds of Ahs are separated by some... distance. The power consumption of the portal is proportional to this distance to the power of four."

"To the power of four meaning?" asked Ranma.

"Shame on you!" hissed Akane. "Like you haven't been learning math at all!" She continued in a normal voice: "Square a square!"

"Yeah, that's one steep curve," agreed Ranma. "Then... You mean we'd have to move in short hops, like crossing a river jumping from stone to stone? Well, what's the problem then? From pyramid to pyramid, then the last leg to Usagi and quickly back!"

"Portal energy consumption also depends on distance between the exit point and the nearest transport node," Ami said cooling her enthusiasm down. "Reversely proportional to it times e. You can't hop from node to node, you have to disembark several tens of kilometers away and walk the rest of the way to the pyramid."

"Tens of kilometers?" Akane cried out.

"I know, I know," Ranma injected hurriedly as she cast a wary side glance at her. "E is... in short, they make olgharithms from this thing."

"I'm afraid, so," confirmed Ami. "There's a vague report about some recent catastrophe that disrupted the entire network of inter-world connections. The transport nodes cannot connect directly anymore due to some 'relativistic temporal vacillation'. As I understand it, the flow of time got slightly desynchronized—"

"And how many such little runs of 'several tens of kilometers' we have to make?" Ranma interrupted her remembering their recent race through desert.

"I suppose, from six to twelve," Ami again blindsided them. "Although if... No, that is too dangerous." She immediately regretted letting that out, but it was too late.

"What's too dangerous?" Ranma grabbed onto her slip like a thick. "So there's some shortcut, isn't it?"

"I don't think..." Ami sighed giving up. "You can reach your destination in two jumps, but you'd have to pass through a very dangerous world..."

"What kind of dangerous?" Ranma kept pressing.

"This world has a zero ki factor," Ami lifted her eyes from the tiny screen and looked right in the redhead's eyes. "All your abilities would be annulled there. Not just weakened like they were in that world where you saved Rei from, but totally blocked."

"But life is impossible without ki," Akane noted in a surprised voice. "Every living thing does have ki, however weak—"

"That's why every living thing there died long ago," Ami interrupted her, clutching the medallion. "And a healthy human dies in twenty to forty hours. It's a world of death, in the literal sense. If you are detained by something—"

"We understand," Ranma cut in flatly. "Right, Akane?"

The dark-haired girl just nodded with a look of grim determination.

"There are many other dangers." Ami tried make her listen to reason, not particularly hoping to. "High levels of radioactivity, for starters."

"So you will tell us all about these dangers..." Ranma frowned. "But we've already wasted too much time. Explain it all to Akane, I'll be running for supplies."

"What do you mean, supplies?" Minako was horrified. "Alone? But what about the Russian special squads?"

"Well, I _do_ ·have a couple tricks up my sleeve," Ranma replied smugly. "And besides, can anyone here teleport by themselves...? Yeah, thought so."

"Could we just talk to them nicely?" asked Hotaru.

The girls exchanged glances.

"Does anyone know Russian?" Makoto voiced the rhetorical question.

Everyone looked at Ami.

"No, no, of course I don't," she replied hastily, suddenly feeling very awkward.

"So we follow my plan," Ranma summed up. "I jump out cloaked with invisibility technique. If everything is quiet I sneak by at a safe distance from them, then I transform—"

"How do you get back?" Akane asked the pressing question.

"Well, we appoint a time, half an hour should be enough, after which you open the portal. I return to the same spot and wait there, invisible—"

"There's no need," Ami interrupted her. "Anyone of the three of us — or, to be exact, you two until my quota replenishes — can open the portal connecting transport node with the last used point. You just have to recite a voice command. It doesn't even matter in which of the Ahs worlds you are when you issue that command... Although for our Earth this is true only in the confines of the anomalous zone... I think."

"So I can open it even without this interactor thingie?" Ranma was delighted. "This changes everything!" She frowned. "But then you can get here from Earth by yourself."

"No, I can't. Think: you and Akane open the portal from the next transport node into yet another world, then again... What would happen after my command?"

"Oh, right!" Ranma slapped her forehead. "Sorry."

"And she is out of her quota!" Akane reminded as she lightly smacked her upside her head. "Did you forget already?"

"Err, then, like," Ranma rubbed her head. Her spouse had a heavy hand. "Let's begin?"

Ami opened the medallion and started tapping the keys.

"If you get an opportunity," Akane was listing for Ranma instructively, "grab us some simple kimono(note 1) so we don't have to look like either vagabonds or a branch of thousands and one nights."

"To save your time," suggested Rei, "you could borrow some ritual garb in the shrine. Especially as most of these are returned by now. Ask grandpa for directions to the storage closet."

"Oh, by the way, bullets could ricochet from walls," Minako injected suddenly. This made the others look at her like she grew a second head. "Why are you looking? What I said is true. Or did you think I'm a complete, hopeless blond?"

"Well, Mina-chan, you are usually so... so..." Makoto fumbled for words.

"So, are the walls here hard?" elaborated the blond who wasn't a hopeless blond as they found.

"Impregnable," said Akane.

"Then there would be definitely ricocheting if shooting starts," Minako said in an expert's voice. "Just imagine these soldiers riding their bears through a strange and mysterious forest. And suddenly before them there emerges a mystical gate into some astral unknown! Of course they could snap."

"Thank you, this reassures us so much," Rei responded sarcastically.

"Akane cast a worried glance at Ranma.

"I mean," Minako continued meanwhile, "we have to walk out before Ranko-chan opens the portal. And hide behind the corners."

"A good idea," agreed Ranma. "Ami, are you finished?"

Ami kept looking tensely at the small screen as she checked and double-checked the formula. Finally she closed the medallion: "Done. You can open it by voice. Your code phrase, then 'open the portal to specified coordinates'. To close it, just say 'close the portal', you could do this from the other side, you could even whisper. If it doesn't work, repeat your code phrase." She hastily retreated towards the exit.

"Here we go..." Ranma flattened herself against the wall beside the arch. "Ahs-seven Tkhachshchas Eet Suht, open the portal to specified coordinates!"

The girls stood listening outside the pyramid. The apprehension was so tense that when instead of expected gunshots, or a quiet pop of a closing portal, they heard Ranma's shocked outcry of "What the hell?" they grew worried and started peeking into the pyramid against the plan.

The portal was open, Ranma stood there sticking her head out, not hiding at all.

"What the heck is this?！ Ami! Hey, Ami, come here, look! What is going on out there?"

Ami rushed towards the portal, the others followed her in an uneven crowd. Akane outran them pushing the other girls aside and stood beside Ranma on a rocky slope.

On a rocky slope.

There was no forest. There was a lifeless mountainside. Completely intact, without a slightest chip where a deep ravine made by Saturn should have been. Snow lay untouched where Sol's flame should have vaporized it.

"Look!" Minako cried out, her voice catching.

Everyone turned around. They stared in silence. The mountain ridge across the valley, that should have been leveled by the knight, stood intact.

"Why did we return to the past?" asked Rei.

Ranma squinted looking at the sky. "Doesn't look like the past. Sun has moved. We spent more than a a couple hours there," She pointed at the subpolar sun hanging low over the horizon. "It moved for that much."

"So it's yesterday, then?" asked Minako. "Or a year ago?" She suddenly grew horrified. "Don't tell me we fell a hundred years back! You can't tell in these mountains!"

Ami frowned fiddling with one of her appliances she carried around wrapped in a piece of lab coat. "No, it's definitely today. The navigator signals confirm the date."

"So this is, whatchamacallit, parallepipedal world?" Minako asked in confusion.

"No, I'm getting signals from a server I set up myself just this morning."

"Look!" Ranma exclaimed in alarm as she looked behind the portal.

They ran around the arch, all at once, to look where she was pointing. Amidst the slope there was an alien intrusion: a huge circle of high grass — a time and a half as high as the girls were — with some baobab towering over it. One half of that baobab looked suspiciously familiar...

Ami gasped dropping her current high-tech thingamabob. The fragile appliance landed with a sharp crack but the girl genius didn't even notice that, her eyes opening wider and wider in horror.

"Isn't it the same baobab half of which sticks up on the other side?" Ranma asked in confusion.

"What?" Rei asked in alarm, addressing Michiru. Everyone turned to look at the emerald-haired woman who was limply sinking down to her knees. "What's wrong? Are you feeling ill?"

"The exchange wasn't equal," Ami whispered in a dead voice. "The reality... I don't even know how to call this. Causality itself became fragmented."

"What does it mean?" asked Minako with trepidation. She didn't like the tone of these words.

"She's gone," Michiru breathed out through tears.

Hotaru was silent but her eyes were so sorrowful, so full of understanding, telling so openly "every living thing is destined to fade away" that everyone who met her eyes felt a chill along their spine. It felt like Death walking by on his business made a friendly pat on their shoulder.

"The fragment where Haruka-san has been," Ami swallowed. "It ceased to be."

"What do you mean?" Akane asked, still refusing to believe.

"The fragments of reality weren't swapped as I thought," explained Ami. "They were copied or replaced. The fragment where she happened to be has been replaced with one where she wasn't present."

"Or copied elsewhere," injected Ranma who took a great dislike towards this extra-mural mourning.

"I doubt it." Ami quenched their hope. "The method I used to detect all who were scattered is... It's very reliable and definite. But it did show exactly six."

"Well maybe she's still _somewhere_?" Ranma was persistent.

"I'm afraid, no," Ami replied absent-mindedly as she was clearly weighing some idea in her mind. "The very fact of cloning points at a high probability of the spacetime fragment having been completely replaced. Although if—"

"So let's consider her missing in action," Ranma interrupted her forcefully. "Like Setsuna. We'll be searching for her. You did have only a hour to study this stuff, didn't you?"

"I, that's right," Ami agreed, somehow confused.

"So after we save Usagi you can take your time with it!" Ranma proclaimed in an optimistic vein. "And figure out how this stuff works, where they disappeared to and who was that invincible lubber! Right?"

"Well, possibly." Ami didn't want to give her comrades false hope. "It's impossible to tell beforehand."

"Good enough." Ranma quickly finished her attempts seeing that she got a stubborn client and her plan to pull everyone out of depression begins to spin wheels. "All right, I'm going. Akane, watch your quota. Don't blow it." She turned around and disappeared moving in huge leaps down the valley.

"Oh! Right!" Akane cried out, startled. "So, contact every half an hour," she spoke rapidly. "Ahs-seven shahs khe eet, close the portal!" With that she disappeared leaving the six undressed girls alone amidst the frosty middle of nowhere.

"Hey!" Rei shouted towards the empty space. "What if magic doesn't work everywhere? What would we do, croak here from the cold?"

"I think," Makoto noted as she shivered in only her underwear and boots, "she thought of half an hour naked in the frost as a mild endurance test."

"Or she didn't think at all!" Minako exploded hopping on one foot then on another one. "A-choo! We aren't her, we didn't ask for swimming in an ice-hole or sleeping on nails!"

"The available quota is limited," Ami reminded them quietly. "An open portal consumes power."

"Right..." Minako grumbled losing her momentum. "Everything for saving our Princess and no complaining... All right, I don't know about you guys but I'm going to Venus Star Power, Make-Up!"

The transformation phrase rang long ago, even the echo of it died out. Minako continued to stay with her henshin pen held high. Finally she uttered a very colorful expression and started hopping from foot to foot with renewed intensity curling her toes.

"A test, you say," Rei said with venom. "A mild one." Bare-footed as well, she wasn't hopping but kept shifting from foot to foot curling her toes. "And of course it was too hard to throw my parka out first!"

"Mine too, by the way," added Minako.

Everyone stared at the spot where the portal had been, expecting Akane to come to her senses and open it for a second to return their sparse collection of winter clothing.

A minute passed. Then another one. It started to snow a little.

"That's one hardheaded girl," grumbled Rei.

"Let me give you my boots," Makoto suggested with true sincerity. "After all, I've trained under a waterfall and—"

"And got an impressive cold that time!" Rei interrupted her. "Let's move, quickly. Find where this null-zone ends and transform at last!

"Because Michiru-mama is freezing!" Hotaru agreed as she pulled the emerald-haired woman by her arm.

"I'm sorry Hotaru-chan!" Michiru said, throwing off her stupor "You are chilled!" This sounded ironic coming from the woman clad in a makeshift bikini made from strips of cloth roughly tied together.

"It's nothing!" the little girl tried to refuse. "I'm not cold at all!" she said with open sincerity despite the fact her ears were becoming red: her hat got lost in the turmoil. "Take my parka, you'll freeze!" The legs visible under the said parka were covered with only thin pantyleg stockings and one boot.

"Let's do it like this: I'll carry you and you'll be warming my back," Michiru suggested as she kneelt before her sticking her elbows out.

"All right," agreed Hotaru. "Only..." She hastily unzipped her parka and only then climbed onto her mom's back. "Oh, you are so cold! Let's go, hurry!"

"Long overdue," Minako echoed as she smoothly turned from hopping in place to an awkward run bare-footed across rocks. "Now— Hey! What are you doing!" she yelled indignantly when Makoto scooped her up.

"I'm wearing boots so I run faster!" the tall brunette retorted as she threw the other girl over her shoulder and pushed faster. Besides, you're warm! Stop wriggling and hold on properly!"

Rei lagged behind walking awkwardly bare-footed beside Ami who kept even with her. "Aren't you freezing at all?" she asked, her teeth clattering. The blue-haired girl walked calmly not even shivering in her bra and mini-skirt.

"It's a bit colder here than I like," Ami admitted sheepishly. "Would you mind if I follow their example by carrying you?"

"Wouldn't it be too much for you?" Rei asked her smaller friend doubtfully.

"I'll manage," Ami reassured her. "Besides, I'm wearing shoes, we don't have to go far by my estimates, and..." She finally shivered adding awkwardly: "And it's warmer together."

(シーンブレイク)

After she scoured shops in search of the more exotic gear like an inflatable boat or arctic gear Sailor Sol had only scrapes of their family budget left despite choosing second-hand shops on the otskirts, pressing without any conscience on shoopkeepers' conscience and using her girly charms with all the delicacy of a sledgehammer.

It was time to visit one more place, to get more mundane traveling supplies.

The pigtailed girl disappeared in a flash leaving behind a crowd of confused onlookers and slightly impoverished shoopkepers.

(シーンブレイク)

The dead zone turned out to be quite small, barely a couple hundred meters across. They combed it thoroughly, transforming and detransforming in shifts but getting chilled despite that. They overturned every rock. But there weren't many rocks on this monolitic, wind-swept slope. There was no sign of Uranus.

Neptune went numb inside. There was really no hope left: Mercury computer started working again, showing no life signs for several kilometers around. But they didn't even need it: their magical senses confirmed a complete lack of human presence.

Uranus has really been erased by the cataclysm. Scratched out of the reality so completely and irrevocably there was no trace left of her.

The six had to sit there waiting for when Sol returns. Or when Akane opens the portal after half an hour elapses.

Or the enemy returns to squash them like bugs.

(シーンブレイク)

There was a flash in a narrow space between fences, Sailor Sol materializing from the light. She glanced around, listening, and dropped her transformation, for a fleeting moment becoming nude Ranma. The red silk shirt and black pants quickly faded in around her. It seems there was again some ruckus in the Tendou house...? Ranma hopped up onto the fence, the onto the doujo roof. From this vantage point she could observe a curious scene: a panicking, slightly steaming panda was running in circles around the carp pond. He was chased by a teakettle-bearing Nodoka who minced after him with an almost unnatural speed in her impeccable kimono.

"Dear, stop running. Let us try one more time, I am sure the first time water was just not hot enough..."

"Borf!" The cursed martial artist raised a tablet as he kept nervously glancing back: "Don't scald the cute panda!" He flipped his tablet. "Pandas are a rare, endangered species!"

"Dear! Pleasae stop squirming! We _really_ ·need to talk!"

"PA-HOO‼" Another tablet flew up: "Somebody help‼" flip "She tries to boil me!"

"Dear‼！"

Despairing, the panda splash-landed in the pond raising an impressive wave.

"Ara..." Kasumi's voice reached from inside the house. "It's not nice to scare the poor carps like that."

"Dear, you are wearing my patience thin!"

"Blurbl." The panda dramatically crossed his eyes. "You have mistaken, woman!" flip "I'm just a capybara you aren't acquainted with!"

"Oh, that's rich, uncle Saotome!" an invisible Nabiki commented from the family room. "A true masterpiece!"

"Mom!" Ranma called as she jumped down from the roof. "What's going on?"

"Ranma!" the woman said in a slightly berating voice. "How should you greet your parents?"

"I'm home. Hello, mother. Are you well?" Ranma said in a too-sweet good girl's voice as she accepted the teakettle. "So what's the ruckus?" She cast a side glance at her father as she lifted the teakettle over her head, but immediately jerked it away. "Ouch! Why so hot?"

"Oh, we had have a little misunderstanding, that's all," Nodoka replied serenely as she managed at the same time to look lovingly at her child and disapprovingly at her husband who floated in the pond. "It seems I was too hasty and failed to heat the water properly the first time."

Ranma felt something fall inside. She started pouring the scalding-hot water over her head disregarding the pain. And the longer she poured the bigger the chunk of ice in her stomach grew. Tearing the lid off, the girl upended the tea-kettle over her head.

Nodoka looked at her with growing confusion that soon turned to worry.

"I'm afraid that isn't the case, mom," Ranma squeezed out wincing with one eye shut. "That isn't the case at all." She threw the tea-kettle down to the grass and raised her shaking hand to wipe excess water from her steaming red bangs. "Why does this shit keep happening to me?！" her outraged cry reached for the sky.

(シーンブレイク)

"Do you know what?" Venus said with a sigh casting a sidelong glance at Mercury who sat engrossed with her computer. "I wouldn't have thought, but I envy her." She ran her fingers through her hair looking like she couldn't get used to it being clean and smooth again.

Her only reply was silence reigning over this mountain land. Nobody felt inclined to talk.

There was a flash as Sol returned carrying a huge backpack bigger than herself, almost bursting at the seams. She held a smaller one in her hand.

"Ain't I late?" she asked huffing from exertion. Teleporting while carrying a load was five times harder. Exhausting even to someone as powerful as her.

A gate-sized kaleidoscopic arch appeared a hundred meters away from the Senshi.

"Everyone's all right?" Akane shouted peeking out. "Exactly half an hour as I promised! Oh, Ranma, you're already here! Come on, hurry! The sooner we go, the sooner we get there!" She then made an awkward pause as she bent down to grab something. "And here are, ahem, three sets of parkas..." She lifted the bundle of warm clothing in one hand, displaying it.

"Thank you very much," Mars shouted back with a great deal of venom. "This will help us greatly _now_!"

The redhead detransformed into Ranma and hurried towards the portal. Mercury also detransformed into Ami but paused turning back to the others: "As for you, leave! Return to Tokyo via Sailor Teleport!"

"Aren't you going with us?" Jupiter asked, surprised.

"No," Ami replied with conviction. "I'll return here to wait, according the plan."

"So you want us to abandon you?" Venus exclaimed with indignation.

"You could do nothing if he returns," reasoned Ami. "We'll just die all together in vain... Don't you worry, I'll be hiding! I'll run over that ridge—"

"Do you seriously think," Mars retorted sceptically, "That someone as powerful wouldn't be able to see you through a mountain?"

"Someone as powerful can barely fly," Saturn injected with a childish directness. "He also couldn't defend from common rocks for a while."

"So there's always hope," Ami finished on an optimistic note. "Besides... I have an idea, maybe I could open the portal to that zone in Tokyo. If that's the case, I'll return right there..." She looked at each of the the five girls in sailor suits. Rare snowflakes kept thawing on her bare shoulders making her scringe. "Come on. Some of us do have relatives there, they must be beside themselves from worry. Sol cannot waste her power ferrying you one by one. Go! There's exactly five of you remain." She turned around and ran towards the portal where Akane was waving impatiently.

"So we just withdraw?" asked Jupiter. She didn't like the idea.

"What else could we do?" Venus shrugged. "Without Sol and Moon it would be like going with a toothpick against a tank. Let's really get out of here. Maybe he won't linger here if he sees no one around."

"Yeah, he'll go straight for Tokyo and level it," Mars said cooling her enthusiasm. "But you are right about a toothpick. Let's make him at least make a chase if he tries to get us. We'd gain nothing by brooding here."

The girls formed a circle. The three Inners held hands with Neptune and the miniature Saturn who was also a part-time Judgment Day angel. No one felt confident. Granted, Inners did it many times before, but always together with Moon. Michiru was used to teleport together with Haruka while Hotaru didn't even know if she could. But they didn't have a choice.

They closed their eyes concentrating... Their auras manifested in the visible spectrum enveloping the Senshi in the glow of their trademark colors. Their hair rose up flowing in a spectral wind... The rocks around them began to break slowly floating upwards...

One discordant shout of "Sailor Teleport!" and one blinding flash later all that was left was... an incomplete circle of four girls surrounded by a circle of crushed bedrock.

Only Saturn jumped. Leaving open a very pressing question: _where to_? She wasn't responding to communicator calls, "offline or out of range". Considering that the range of these magical gadgets included the entire inner system, up to and including the asteroid belt, the prognosis was somehow not reassuring.

As for the four of them, they were stuck in the Siberian backwater.

(シーンブレイク)

Ranma meanwhile finished sharing the joyless news with Ami.

"I think," the girl genius explained without conviction, "this is somehow related to our world's properties distorting because of transfusion of two universes. Many things that were possible before became impossible now, including the Jusenkyou magic. It's a pure miracle that our Senshi magic still works. I hope we'll find a way to reverse these changes... But I cannot promise. Even Sailor Moon's powers react violently and unpredictably with these alien—"

"In short, it could turn out that I'm stuck for good." Ranma swallowed a sudden lump in her throat. "And that I'll have to live the rest of my life as a hundred percent woman?" There were icy creeps along her back. The fear to be stuck forever he thought he had rid of after that battle on Mount Horai... It turned out it wasn't gone, it was there, slumbering until the time was right.(note 2)

Compared to everything they went through this wasn't the end of the world, far from it. But Ranma felt himself in deep shit. She shuddered. All these chilling sides of being a girl he managed to dodge till now, pretending it wasn't for real: the periods, the ever-present background of male attention, the risk of specific diseases and even the probability to get knocked up in some idiotic way...(note 3) All these horrors suddenly drew close with mocking grins: you won't get away now, there's nowhere to run. "Damn it, why does this crap keep happening to me?" She wanted to hit her head against something hard. Repeatedly.

"Don't be afraid, I'm with you." Akane held her spouse by the shoulders. "I won't abandon you, ever!" She lifted the red-haired head up with one hand and looked into the eyes welling up with tears of angry impotence. "For you I'll..." She tensed, overcoming something inside. "I'll become a full lesbian!" She abruptly slammed her lips into the other girl's lips choking her in an awkward but energetic kiss while squeezing her in a tight hug.

"Mmgm?" Ranma boggled. This was unexpected! So unlike Akane, what with her vehement resent of the very idea... But the other girl just shut her eyes tightly and hugged even tighter quashing them together to the point of their ribs creaking. Ranma felt ashamed of himself: Akane is a real girl, she lived with all of this from her birth never able to dodge any of it! There's no way he'd be afraid of something that—

Akane started working with her tongue and all thoughts shot straight out of the pigtailed girl's head. She returned the hug, but gentler, without bone-crushing force. Unchaste thoughts started fogging her mind and Ranma's hands strayed lower...

They were interrupted by a brief flash accompanied with Ami's startled outcry. The blushing girls jumped apart and hurried towards their comrade who stood performing last observations of the death world through the open portal.

"Look!" Ami pointed somewhere beyond the arch. They stood beside her and looked outside. Far away, over the horizon, there was a characteristic mushroom cloud rising slowly to the sky, barely noticeable in the distance.

"Whoa!" Ranma said with disgust. "Who, I'd like to know, throws nukes around in a dead world?"

"It seems you have to abandon the idea of taking a shortcut," said Ami.

"No!" Akane retorted sharply as she turned to face Ami who in turn turned to face her. "We must go, Usagi could be wounded. She could be holding with the last of her strength onto a tree, with wolves waiting below. You told us there's a detailed description of that world in there. Read it and tell us what to avoid. If there's strong radiation there, we'll survive. It will heal anyway when we return and transform.

(シーンブレイク)

Saturn found herself floating amidst vast darkness pierced with countless sparks of star fire. It vasn't dark here for her eyes. It was warm here, cozy even, she felt herself at home. Saturn remembered: the Sailor Senshi were initially habitants of open space. It was their home, the place where they stood their eternal vigil...

Soon she lost her sense of time floating mindlessly amidst the eternal peace.

But then there suddenly was light. Saturn turned around noticing with surprise that she was next to her planet. A black shadow covering almost half the sky was highlighted with a thin, fuzzy crescent of light, a blinding point of faraway sun budding off of it. The luminary looked so tiny.

Looking closer she noticed from the opposite side a thin, almost invisible line of light crossing the star-filled expanse: the rings, as they are seen from inside, from the gap between them and the planet where the girl orbited. To the right of her the ephemeral line disappeared in the planet's shadow.

When her amazement finally died down Saturn felt lonely. Her magic made her free from such things as thirst or hunger, from the very passage of time. She could float here for eternity time and again watching the tiny Sun rise and set of while her planet made its unhurried circles on its predestined path.

But she didn't have to, not anymore. She wasn't alone, not in this life, thanks to Serenity the elder who wished them all to be reborn together, on the same planet. And despite the pain of losses her place was there.(note 4)

Concentrating on the progenitor star, Saturn wished to be next to her mom and friends. With an amazing ease she slid through space and time.

"Oops..."

This was definitely not the place. Saturn surveyed the ruins of Silver Millennium strewn around her and Earth brightly shining in the night sky. What a place full of sadness... It seems teleporting isn't as easy as she thought. Even when you have more than enough power.

Saturn though about her mom who must be beside herself from worry. She concentrated on Earth and jumped again.

Castle Charon wasn't the place she expected to emerge. She tried again...

"I should have trained more," said the girl too wise for her age. The trip was very educating, going through the planetary castles, Oort cloud and, she suspected, through outskirts of the Alpha Centauri system. But everything begins to grow boring after a while.

"It seems, without the skill of setting the destination point properly I'm doomed to choose of well-treaded places of Silver Millennium," the warrior of Ruin and Rebirth thought after having returned for an uncounted time to her planet. "Maybe I should put more effort into it?" She concentrated on her mom and called upon her power. Not letting herself slip forward like she did in her previous attempts, she continued to call forth more and more, pushing with her will against the unruly magical might. Is it time...? No, a little more! Come on, just a bit! She can do it! She will make it! She can jump where _she_ ·needs!

If Saturn hadn't closed her eyes she'd notice a blinding purple aura surrounding her. She gathered so much power it would be enough to vaporize a medium-sized asteroid.

Unable to hold on any more, the girl jumped. This teleportation was unlike the previous ones, it felt like an endless falling into an abyss instead of a fleeting transition.

When the endless instant finally ended Saturn opened her tightly shut eyes hoping... She panicked finding only dark, starless void around her! She looked around frantically for some five times before she noticed, at last, the misty spiral of her home galaxy deep down below her feet. It was approximately the size of Moon as it seen fom Earth. The central bar glowed like a lamp through fog, the spiral arms looked like blurry, disheveled ghosts all but disappearing towards their ends.

"It seems I overshot a little," the girl concluded scratching sheepishly at the back of her head.

(シーンブレイク)

April 11, 2012. Translated May 20, 2012

 **Author's notes:**

 **1**  
Kimono aren't limited to elaborate and rich clothing. A ragged robe worn by a vagabond is also a kimono.

 **2**  
Battle at Mount Horai concludes the Herb storyline (manga volume 24 and the beginning of Volume 25, doesn't show in the anime) where Ranma, Ryouga and Mousse barely avoided being locked in their cursed forms for life.

 **3**  
There are at least _three_ ·storylines in the manga (volume 19 chapter 3; volume 26 chapter 5; volume ?？ chapter ?？ ) where Ranma, helpless by some or other reason, ends in the hands of some unfamiliar guy an a remote and desolate place. That's not counting two more stories featuring the permanent love pill and the koi fishing rod.

 **4**  
Serenity didn't give them reincarnation, they have it by default. She just redirected it so that they all reincarnate in the same place in the same time period, along with thousands of people who lived and died on the Moon.

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— Orphus users (24 bugs so far)


	11. Dead Zone

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled v1.5**

 **Chapter 11  
Dead Zone.**

(シーンブレイク)

Two girls were striding across rocky hills devoid of life. There was not a single blade of grass. Small backpacks of some twenty killograms were feeling strangely heavy. Akane was walking in front, full of unbending optimism despite all the risks of their chosen path. She was dressed in baggy camou pants and an unzipped shirt of the same coloration with a gray-green sweatshirt underneath. There were heavy ankle boots with ridgy soles on her feet. Ranma was dragging behind her, gloomy and full of apprehension. She was dressed in her trademark red and black Chinese silks complete with kung-fu slippers fit for her female form.

"This just sucks," Ranma kept grumbling, huddled up from either displeasure or the chilly winds that were whiffling across rocks. "This place is alright but what would we do if we meet a serious river in the next world? How do we get you across?"

"Would you stop droning?" Akane snapped, the mention of her greatest weakness got under her skin. "What would we do if we meet a herd of cats? Should we have taken a dog with us...? Stop pestering me, I got enough headache with this thing." She shook the medallion in annoyance.

"I'm sorry," replied Ranma. Judging by her tone she wasn't sorry at all. "It just, you know, grates. We are barely off the start and here I feel worn out." She snorted. "But you're right. Enough whining, no matter how much this world gets to you..." She fell silent, lost in thought. For some time the silence was broken only by pebbles crunching under their feet and the wind whistling. Then Ranma slapped her forehead and continued in a careless tone: "Well, I'm whining because I got stuck. But in all honesty I got off easy. Shampoo got hit much harder."

"What did you say?" Akane stopped, turning around to face her.

"She got locked as a cat, such a stupid coincidence."

"Such a disaster!" Akane said with sincere compassion. "I'd hoped that at least that pest would be spared."

"I too," agreed Ranma. "Well, pops doesn't count, he just doesn't care. But not blind idiot nor the clingy cat deserve this. But no luck. It was painful to even look at her. Ears drooped, eyes dull, haven't even jumped me... Well, I didn't have time to say my condolences. Mousse went ape-shit as soon as he recognized me. He just blew his top. Well, I can sympathize, he had to blame someone to relieve the stress and stuff. And here I walk in, conveniently... In short, I tied him with his own chains and handed him to the old ghoul. But it was such a fuss..."

"All right," Akane turned forward to keep striding with the same energy. "The sooner we get Sailor Moon back, the sooner everything will be back to normal. I hope at least P-chan was in his human form when it happened."

Ranma grumbled something unintelligible in agreement as she thoughts back to the time when the Great and Terrible Revelation went off not with an all-consuming bang but with a whimper. Akane haven't even changed her disposition towards Ryouga, although she took a habit of sarcastically calling him "P-chan" regardless of form. This always made the oaf to become flustered and make himself scarce.

(シーンブレイク)

(before they ventured forth)

"You won't be able to carry it," Akane said doubtfully.

"Well, what could we do?" Ranma tied her backpack shut. "It's against everything I know to do serious hiking without enough supplies." She critically weighed the backpack on one finger. "We are cutting into the bare minimum as it is. If we just knew what to expect in the worlds after that one..." She put the backpack on.

"We went over this already," grumbled Akane. "Don't push Ami."

"I've tried many approaches," the girl genius replied with guilt in her voice. "But so far this limitation looks to be a fundamental law not unlike the relativity principles. If you sacrifice seventy percent of your quota—"

"No means no," Akane cut in sharply. "His quota is our contingency reserve. We don't know where we would need it!"

"I don't object to that," Ranma agreed in an appeasing tone as she went towards the arch. "Ahs-seven Tkhachschas Eet-Suht, open the portal in this aperture to, erm, where it led before."

"Warning," the mechanical voice said. "Erm doesn't parse to valid coordinates. Attention, opening the portal using previous coordinates."

"Well," Ranma said as she made a tentative step through the portal. She immediately grunted bending down under the weight of her backpack. She didn't give up, even ran a circle of couple hundred meters on unsteady feet. Then she returned, panting, and swore quietly as she threw the backpack off.

"I've told you," Akane summed up gloomly. "Let's unload more."

"This sucks," grumbled Ranma throwing things out of the backpack. Things their very lives could be depending upon. "It was barely forty kilograms!"

(シーンブレイク)

So she learned, up close and personal, the meaning of "zero ki factor". This unnatural world was rejecting the spiritual force as it rejected the force of magic. Both girls were feeling an unpleasant weight, like a ponderous stone slab hanging centimetres above one's head. It was oppressive by its very presence. Any attempts to use ki, frequent because they were reflectory, butted against this invisible, otherwise almost imperceptible barrier. All they had left was their muscle power. This turned them into mere mortals, albeit highly trained ones. They've been able to take only barest minimum of supplies, some twenty kilograms each. They left most of the necessary supplies behind and were now relying on blind luck to a degree.

They had far to go. There was nothing to look at among these monotonously-lifeless rocky hills. There was nothing to distract them from various unwanted thoughts creeping in on them unobtrusively like nuzzling cats. If ki suppressing in the next world turns out to be as draconian as here, how far would they be able to keep going? How long would they be able to hold on? No one of them could tell for sure. Ami just didn't have enough data and time. What for Ranma herself... She didn't even have to concentrate to feel this world pressing on her, unobtrusively but persistently, trying to turn her into dead matter. Her spirit was resisting successfully, but its strength was finite while the patient, strangling presence was eternal. Their voyage was akin to a dive: if you could hold your breath long enough you'll be fine. If you couldn't, there will be more fish food... Well, there were no fishes here, not anymore. Every living thing in this graveyard world had died long ago. It was even a bit hard to breathe. Ami had reassured them that the atmosphere remained breathable despite declining oxygen levels, there were no plants to replenish it.

What was most vexing, she couldn't tell for how long she'd be able to hold on. Like someone diving for the first time in their life, she could only tell that her remaining time was diminishing. But would it suffice to reach the bottom and return? Would you surface barely out of breath — or fade into darkness, writhing from pain in your lungs?

In short, there were lots of reasons to be optimistic. Because the ki suppression turned out to be only the tip of the iceberg.

(シーンブレイク)

(before they ventured forth)

"Radioactivity?" Akane shouted suddenly, attracting Ranma's attention to herself and Ami.

"I'm afraid so," the girl genius replied, completely immersed in the tiny medallion screen. "And its levels are quite high. The Chernobyl zone is much safer, for comparison."

"Err, What's that Chenoby... howzyacallit?" Ranma asked trying to not look particularly interested. Better make a fool of yourself than be sorry later, this particular lesson she had learned.

"You are so ignorant it hurts!" Akane berated her indignantly. "Chernu... In short, it's a nuclear power plant that blew up in... nineteen ninety one? Or was it... er..." She fell silent, embarrassed. Ranma smirked obnoxiously.

"It was the worst nuclear disaster our world knows of today," Ami poitely interrupted them. "Chernobyl is a Russian nuclear power plant that exploded in nineteen eighty six. Luckily, there were no more disasters comparable in scale. The consequences were terrible: a huge area has been irradiated, people living there either evacuated or died from radiation sickness in the years to follow. The land around the plant became unsuitable for human habitation for hundreds of years to come. Living organism are often subject to horrible mutations there... Well, you know, six-legged rabbits, pines with foot-long needles... The favorite material of tabloids." She was silent for a while, then added: "I hope our domestic nuclear plants are built with better safety measures."

"And that zone is safe compared to this place?！" Ranma didn't like the news.

"In your place I wouldn't worry about the radiation," said Ami. "Its distribution is highly uneven, you'll be able to avoid dangerous areas using the map it does have in there." She pointed at the medallion. "No, what worries me is the concept of 'temporal noise' described here. I never met anything even remotely similar, not in the modern science nor in the records of Silver Mmillennium."

"Something worse than radioactivity?" Ranma asked with disbelief while dark apprehension slithered from the depths of her mind like a nuzzling viper.

"...Yes," Ami replied slowly, engrossed in reading. "This article says it disrupts the DNA replication mechanism leading to a sharp decline in the cell division process. Even a small exposure results in multicellular organisms almost completely losing their regenerative abilities."

"Umm, care to dumb it down for us less educated people?" hinted Ranma. "What did all of that mean? Our wounds would stop healing or what?"

"Much worse," Ami replied absently, her eyes focused on the screen. "The overall effect is analogous to premature aging akin to one caused by some genetic diseases, but even sharper." She lifted her eyes looking directly at Ranma. "Do you know that our bodies are subject to constant degradation? Only our regenerative mechanisms allow us to live decades instead of months by constantly replacing worn-out cells."

"Months?" Ranma swallowed.

"That's right," Ami replied firmly. "Pass through a temporal noise zone, and your body would grow old and decrepit in only a few months.

Ranma petrified as she imagined herself in Cologne's hide. Her hair stood upright, including the pigtail.

"By the way, that is the main reason we need regular sleep," Ami finished absently as she turned back to the medallion, thus missing the Ranma-shaped stone statue behind her back. "The regeneration works only when we sleep... Or when we are in our Senshi forms."

Ranma shattered into a pile of rocks and sand.

(シーンブレイク)

Their path not only led across deceptively-flat rocky hills but was also meandered ungodly because of temporal noise zones peppering the land. There were also spots of extreme radioactivity, albeit much rarer.

Ranma was walking silently after Akane who at times cast glances at the tiny medallion screen correcting their course. The medallion was pinging merrily as it counted radiation dose. Even the relatively 'clean' places had levels fifteen times higher any sane sanitary limits.

But the radioactivity was a pure triviality compared to...

(シーンブレイク)

(before they ventured forth)

"Ka-who?" Ranma repeated, dumbfounded.

"Khas-eeschaeets," explained Ami. "Large-scale inorganic life-forms who produce nuclear explosions during their mating season. Unfortunately, their mating season is currently at its peak, as you could see for yourselves a minute ago."

"What sort of beasts are they that they make nuclear explosions when they... umm... do this and that?" Ranma was taken aback.

"There's very little about them here," Ami replied in an apologizing voice. "They are endemic to worlds with zero ki factor. As human survival in such worlds is impossible for any significant duration, there's just no one to study them. At least I think so." She concentrated on the screen. "Let's see. Approximately a kilometer in diameter, feed by digging up mountains and absorbing various minerals. While feeding, they resemble a crater filled with oil... So are they liquid then...? While moving they form a vortex consisting of their own matter mixed with absorbed rock material. Hmmm... A typical vortex has a diameter of one to three kilometers, height two to five. Their movement has an intense landscape-forming effect. The best repellent is... a nuclear device ranging from one to ten kilotons. A direct hit makes them retreat or change their course... And the last piece of information, although this one is marked as unconfirmed: they are radioactive." Ami lifted her eyes from the screen. "If that is true then approaching them, even as far as several kilometers, especially downwind, would be lethal. And beware of their tracks."

"Great," grumbled Ranma. "Such fellows could squash Godzilla and not even notice. Is it at least possible to run away from them?"

"A second." Ami browsed for a little while. "Their speed varies from twenty to forty kilometers per hour."

"Which means, unlikely," Ranma summed up even more grimly. "Without your ki, you can't run like that, not for long. All we could do is notice them from afar and move across their course.

(シーンブレイク)

"How do you think, did these hashu-yshaitu finish their, er, business?" Ranma asked rhetorically, just to keep conversation going.

Their problem was that the portal laid in the direction where yesterday the mysterious khas-eeschaeets have been flashing their nuclear bangs. Ami had reassured them that the unstudied monsters were more than a hundred kilometers away while the portal was much closer, but... Who could know where'd they crawl. Two times already the girls had to cross immense furrows of crushed rock plowed through terrain, with the radiation counter screeching like a butchered pig. One didn't have to be a genius to understand whose tracks these were.

"I hope they did," Akane reassured her husband. "And if not, you know what to do: drop to the ground your feet to the flash and pray vigorously..." The joke came out strained and unfunny. A long, rolling rumbling came from the horizon, as if mocking them. Both girls started.

"You know, I feel just naked without my ki," admitted Ranma. "As if the jackassery with our Senshi magic wasn't enough."

"You think I don't?" replied Akane. "It feels like turning half blind and deaf. I hadn't even noticed how I got used to my Senshi powers." She touched her henshin pen hanging on a thick cord under her sweatshirt, currently unresponsive and useless. "It'd do us good to visit here from time to time. Just to not forget how it is, to be a common mortal."

Ranma agreed wholeheartedly.

Then they ran into a dead end and were forced to backtrack, all the while berating the useless medallion. Granted, the tricky mechanism had a built-in map of deadly zones. But it was building it on the fly, scanning around with something akin to a radar. The range of this thing was disgustingly small, a kilometer or two at best, while these zones were indistinguishable by the naked eye, all the same repetitive rocky slopes. Thus the girls were moving like moles in a dark labyrinth, making a lot of unnecessary footwork. What should they do if they stumble on a khas-eeschaeet and have to flee... The very thought was making them ill.

Besides, the travelers have already managed to get into danger several times, thanks to Akane's idiotic mistakes. She would set a wrong scanning mode, or map scale, or just look at the screen sideways — this one she was still feeling ashamed of. Luckily she hadn't managed yet to find an option to turn off the voice warnings. When detecting a danger, the medallion would employ a shrill siren making the girls run back along their own tracks.

(シーンブレイク)

Nodoka, as always clad in her impeccable kimono, was sitting and drinking tea with perfect serenity — a manifestation of her name itself.(note 1) Across the table there sat a gloomy panda surrounded by a black cloud of depression.

A tablet rose slowly, held in a furry paw: "Oh the ungrateful son of mine..."

"Now-now, dear. Don't be so glum. I'm sure he'll find a way to unlock the curses. Both his and yours."

The panda livened a bit, raising an another tablet: "He didn't even offer to take his father with him!"

"Look at it this way: my manly son went on a journey together with his wife, alone. Taking his father along would be somewhat... awkward."

The panda flipped up a tablet, shocked: "But he's stuck as a girl!"

"Oh, I'm sure that wouldn't be an obstacle for my manly son," Nodoka parried serenely and sipped her tea.

She noted with satisfaction that pandas, it turns out, _could_ ·become green.

(シーンブレイク)

"Oh my Shampoo!" **sob** "How could he do this to you!-"

Bonk "Shut up, duck-dolt. I need to concentrate."

"Meow?"

"Yes, granddaughter. There's something very wrong with the world."

(シーンブレイク)

Five hours of walking at an exhausting pace resulted only in weariness. Ranma and Akane found, to their disgust, that they made much less than anticipated. Akane gained a permanently-angry grimace and unending eye twitch while Ranma got enriched with several lumps. Also, her ability to shut up in time improved by half a percent. She was accepting the beatings with a philosophical patience: after all, Akane couldn't just smash the medallion against a handy boulder, couldn't she? But her feelings towards it definitely needed some outlet!

As they descended from yet another rocky hill they came upon a strange object. It was the first time they met something that wasn't rock. There was some bunch of hard gray fibres sticking out of the ground, like a scruffy end of an immense rope some half a meter in diameter.

"What do you think it is?" Akane asked as she cautiously walked around the unknown object keeping a safe distance.

"A tree," Ranma replied like it was going without saying. She walked up to it and kicked at the gray fibres. These proved to be hard but brittle, partly shattering from her slight kick. "A former one." Ranma stopped kicking a the ragged remains and ran to catch up with Akane. "I wonder how many years have passed since everything had died here? Even a tree-stump dried up to pieces even though it couldn't rot."

"Thank you for inspiration," growled Akane. "This... thing is pressing like a huge rock upon my soul. It's surely nice to know, on top of that, that we are walking a graveyard."

"Come on, I haven't said anything wrong?" Ranma tried to defend herself.

"I don't know about you, but I hve been hoping there was never life to begin with." The short haired girl sighed. "Honestly, it's better to stay ignorant sometimes."

They came out onto a flat plain covered with large bumps of gravel. But the bumps posed no obstacle, being very flat and packed to concrete hardiness. The girls were walking briskly. Sometimes they met small sand banks reminding Akane of that desert. She was glad it was cold here, for a change. Their energetic pace served the girls as a good protection from the dry, piercing wind.

After meandering for only half an hour they crossed the plain. Akane fumbled over the keyboard to find, to her joy, a large zone practically free of temporal noise beginning nearby. She shared the good news with Ranma.

The redhead hmmphed sceptically making Akane fume.

They turned towards a hill rising over the flat plain. Its slope turned to be a mix of pit gravel and crushed rocks. They started climbing it, sometimes using their hands.

When they reached a couple hundred meters above the plain, Akane turned to look back. She felt a nasty chill crawling along her spine: from this height, it was clear the lumps of gravel on the plain they've left were forming a too-regular pattern. In places one could discern wider lines cutting through this pattern. She shuddered internally, feeling like she inadvertently walked over someone's grave.

"Yeah, right, that's a city," Ranma consented grimly, answering the silent question. "I don't know how many centuries passed for everything to crumble like that, but people definitely lived here... Well, that's very sad but I'm more concerned about the hill we're climbing right now. I don't like it. Everywhere else it's rock, but here it's pit gravel and crushed rock. Fresh, crumbling. Reminds me of the tracks of these... atomic ones. By the way, there's a question: we were dashing across these furrows without caution. Were there no temporal death zones?"

"To think of it, you are right." Akane even stopped from such a revelation. "The tracks were clean of temporal noise! It seems these creatures clean it away as they move. We need to check it if we come upon a track going in the right direction. We could walk it then!"

"What about the radioactivity?" Ranma was sceptical.

"It's only one or two rems per hour," Akane waved her concerns aside. "It's nothing." (note 2)

"How much is that?" Ranma didn't give up. "Is it much, or is it little?"

"Waitamoment, will you!" Akane growled as she started fighting the medallion controls which made her stumble on the rocky mess. "Oh, I see... Why did they have to spawn so many of these! Sieverts, grays... How could I make sense of it? Wait, I'll call up the calculator!" She continued hitting the keys in a frenzy. Then she sighed and slammed the medallion shut. "It's much. But we'd have to spend a day there to get radiation sickness. And a week or two to die. The ki suppression would kill us long before that... Let's move!"

"It's all right then," agreed Ranma. "Transforming will heal us us from radiation when we return. It's enough that it's not lethal. It's decided then— Whoopsie..." The last part was said in a hushed, frightened voice.

Akane rushed to catch up with the pigtailed girl, then froze in her tracks. There was a round, funnel-shaped crater stretching before them, several hundred meters across. Most of it was occupied by a still mirror of shiny black liquid. It was really looking like a lake of oil.

"Hashushaito," Ranma whispered weakly like the alien non-life form could hear her. Or could it? Both girls backed away carefully, trying not to disturb a single rock. They froze hid by the crater rim.

Akane started tapping the keys. She was frowning more and more. Then she returned to the rim, looking at the serene "lake" warily. She started tapping again.

"So there are no passes to the sides of it?" Ranma asked, already knowing where this was going.

"Exactly." Akane slammed the medallion shut. Exuding determination, she began climbing down into the crater, carefully but quickly. "Doesn'to matter, we'll sneak by quickly. It's probably sleeping so it won't notice us."

"What about the radioactivity?" Ranma asked as she caught up with her.

The medallion started emitting an especially shrill sound not heard before. Akane stopped. She frowned looking at the screen.

"Well... We will still live," she finally whispered as she went forward. But Ranma did not miss an uncertain pause in her words and her involuntarily quickening pace.

"Wait," the redhead whispered. "It's the dust, right? Let's cover our faces with wet rags then."

"A good idea." Akane stopped. "But we don't have any rags."

"What about gauze from the first aid kit?"

They wrapped each other hastily. Ranma performed her part perfectly, then had to fall behind and redo Akane's handicraft. She could not see nor breathe in that knot!

(シーンブレイク)

"Something is gnawing at you," Mars stated matter-of-factly as she walked up to Mercury who was pacing nervously back to and fro. She crossed her arms. "Don't pretend it's nothing, I have noticed you gnawing at your glove. Come on, spill it." She turned even grimier. "What is it this time?"

"I was too slow to tell them everything," the bluette admitted with a heavy sigh. Her eyes were laden with self-recrimination. "With so many thing to teach and learn I thought it more important to concentrate on the primary matters, to avoid overloading Akane-chan with details - she was barely holding at it was... In the end I failed to grasp the big picture."

"And that's all?" Mars asked disbelievingly. "There's nothing to feel guilty about. You have to simplify and omit at every turn, for us the deprived of genius to get it. Don't fret, they are hardy gals. They will figure it out on their own."

"Yes, but..." Mercury wasn't giving up. "That information turned out to be vital. I didn't think reading all the articles was necessary - but now, in hindsight—"

"What's so extra-important did you omit?" Now Mars was growing worried too.

"It concerns these non-organic life forms, khas-eeschaeets." Mercury began pacing to and fro without noticing it. "Or, more precisely, their sensitivity. All sources point out that they are able to feel human presence from a distance up to five kilometers. They inevitably wake up and start pursuing. It is unknown if such behavior is caused by aggression or curiosity, but its result is always naturally fatal."

"Well, I don't think they'd have a reason to approach these things," Mars said trying to calm her down. Without much conviction, though. "They should be easily spotted from afar, right?"

Ami just nodded silently. According to her calculations, the forty kph these things could make meant there was absolutely no chance of survival if Ranma and Akane got close to one. And with stationary khas-eeschaeets being essentially holes in the ground there was practically no chance of noticing them in the rough terrain until it was too late. So even if they had this info now, it would barely affect their chances for survival. And if one of the things was nesting near the transport node, there were no chances at all!

She should have shot down the very idea of making a shortcut through that place. She should have found this deadly detail sooner, should have convinced them!

Haste, that was their worst enemy. If she read that article to the end instead of showing Akane the ropes for the seventh time. If she was quick enough to warn Ranma who ran off not listening... There were solid excuses: having never worked a cellular phone, not to mention a computer, Akane looked like her head was going to explode from learning too much at once. And there was no time to teach Ranma, even less tech-savy a person, while she was ferrying supplies back and forth and preparing them. They couldn't keep the portal open. But excuses won't bring these two back to life if they get killed.

For the lack of a real task, Mercury was busy self-recriminating.

(シーンブレイク)

"Bugger!" Akane whispered a curse. She took to the left, coming close to the surface of the oily-black lake. "Why is there a death zone if they clean them up?"

The medallion scared them almost to the point of soiling their pants as it screeched like a fire alarm. Akane fumbled frantically missing the keys. Finally she made it shut up, but not without stumbling in the process. Several rocks rolled from under her feet to splash down into the black liquid. The girls froze.

The dead silence was stretching, undisturbed. There was no wind here.

"It seems, we got off lucky," Ranma finally whispered.

Several bubbles emerged from the black liquid with a deep, resounding gurgling sound. Swelling up to some half a meter, they popped in showers of viscous splatter. Both girls felt their hearts skip a bit.

There was silence again.

"Let's go," Akane whispered, her voice quivering slightly. "The sooner—"

The medallion shrieked like a police siren whose aching foot was stepped upon. Akane's eyes darted toward the screen, then widened, and she dashed along the shore abandoning all care. Rocks kept rolling from under her feet, disappearing with splashes in the black liquid.

"What got into you?" Ranma called running after her.

"Three hundred rems per hour!" Akane replied briskly as she tried to fiddle with the medallion on the run, her eyes tied to the screen. She stumbled, causing a landslide. Rocks splattered down into the lake disappearing with dull splashes. By some reason there were no waves. "Bugger!" She took to the right, up the slope towards a small saddle in the crater rim. "These bubbles probably released radiation!"

Ranma glanced back. There were dozens of bubbles swelling on the oily-black surface along the shore, denoting the path of their recent dash. Below the place where Akane caused landslide, the surface was rising in one huge bump! The redhead flew forward like she grew wings. Soon she outran her wife.

Both let breathes of relief as they crossed the saddle. But they didn't slow down.

"How do you think, did we wake it up?" Ranma asked glancing back.

"I hope we didn't," replied Akane. "And even if we did, that it wakes up as slowly as Nabiki-oneechan... Just as I told you! There it is, a clean way."

There was a huge furrow of gravel and crushed rock stretching ahead of them, plowing through hills and cliffs alike. It was stretching in almost the right direction, a bit wavy but generally going straight.

"Clean?" asked Ranma. She may have had a great endurance, but she'd definitely not enjoy running across a mess of sharp rocks in her thin-soled shoes. Especially without her usual almost-invincibility given by her ki.

"Well, it's only five rems per hour," Akane replied as she misunderstood the question. "But by running along this thing we'll reach the transport node in an hour!"

"Maybe we could run close to the edge?" Ranma suggested. "It's easier there."

But there were temporal noise zones near the edge, only the center turned out to be free of them.

They kept running along the center of this titanic furrow, counting sharp rocks with their feet as the medallion clicked merrily counting millirems. Their gauze masks were drying quickly in the dead, dry air forcing them to waste their priceless water. Even the burning sun was feeling lifeless.

When Ranma started thinking her feet would fall off anytime soon Akane slowed to a walk examining something on the tiny screen. "It's time to turn," she said briskly. "We're almost there, fourteen hundred meters more and we'll be at the transport node!"

A lone mountain was rising to the right of them. The not yet visible pyramid was probably on its flat top. To turn right they had to find a gap between death zones first, before they could leave the furrow. They started zigging and zagging again, stumbling blindly like lab rats in a labyrinth. Ten steps forward, nine back. All across a mountainside. Up and down. Their path resembled a meandering counter-clockwise spiral going around the lone mountain. Slowly but surely they were approaching the top.

"Can we just break through?" Ranma suggested finally. Just to break the silence: the horror at the thought of premature aging was still there.

"Don't say nonsense," Akane absently waved her away, scrutinizing the screen with such a concentration she was unable to recognize a rhetoric question. "Did you forget anyway? The adverse factor of temporal noise depends only on distance passed through it, time spent in it doesn't matter. It makes no difference if you 'break through' quickly or tiptoe through it, the result would be the same."

"I know that... Ah, forget I asked."

They continued to meander.

They were several hundred meters directly above the place where they started, having made a full circle around the mountain, when Ranma looked into the distance hoping to see the wall of crater containing the creepy 'lake'. She swore: "Aw, the damn asshole! Akane, look! It seems it woke up!"

"Don't distract me! Who woke up?"

"Hashushaitu, who else." Ranma pointed towards the horizon. From the height they reached, the long, slightly wavy trench stretching towards the crater was visible for most of its length, showing as loops and twists partly hidden by hills. The crater itself, however, wasn't visible, shrouded by an inky-black cloud that was swelling as they watched it. Lightning was flashing through the deep darkness. They could feel the ground under their feet vibrate a bit.

"Oh, please, no!" Akane exclaimed as her eyes widened in fright. "Come on, quickly!" She grabbed the medallion peering at its screen so intensely that her eyes started watering up.

"Look! We can go here!" Ranma leaned across her shoulder pointing with her finger at the screen and pestering her with useful advices.

Choosing the route, they ran like panicking lab rats in a burning labyrinth, jostling each other at the turns, stumbling the wrong way in haste and bickering. Akane was turning the medallion in her hands to match the map with their direction. She was fumbling, the chain was getting in the way, it was no easier to navigate using a rotated map. Every turn leading backwards was giving them a fine opportunity to behold the approaching monstrosity. The black cloud had formed a vortex reminiscent of a bottom half of an gigantic twister: wide at the bottom, then narrowing and gradually turning into a slowly undulating trunk encircled with madly rotating crags. Leaving no freedom for interpretation, the trunk kept stretching right towards the girls. With a deceptive slowness, the rotating arch traversed the ten kilometers separating them from the monster. Soon it was descending onto them, oppresive by its scale alone. They missed the moment when it turned into a looming black throat feeling like the sky itself was falling onto them in a whirl of crushed rock. Around them, rocks were crashing here and there having fallen out of the titan's body. Some the size of a bus.

"We got no other way, we have to take a shortcut!" Ranma shouted trying to overcome the rumbling so low it felt more as a vibration in their bones than a sound. "Or there'd be no one to grow old!"

Hounded, Akane tore her eyes from the screen where she was trying to tell left from right. Why was it so dark? She lifted her eyes and stared in mute horror at the black vortex descending onto them, swirling with swarms of broken crags.

"Watch out!" Ranma grabbed her, pushing desperately with her feet in a circle throw. Putting in all her strength, she managed to throw both of them some meager couple meters aside. Still, it was enough for a boulder to miss them. It pulverized rocks where Akane stood a moment ago and ricocheted away. Not wasting her time, Ranma jumped onto her feet grabbing Akane and making a strained dash towards the pyramid.

The exhausting weakness crushed them like a strike at one's solar plexus. The medallion started emitting a nasty shrill warble. Ranma stumbled dropping Akane and falling on top of her. The deadening absence of ki, which have been pressing little by little before, suddenly grew all-powerful, crushing and choking them, demanding that they turn into dead and inert matter right then and there!

Akane came to her senses. Jumping up onto all fours with the last remains of her strength, she started dragging Ranma back by her collar. A step, three more, and they were able to stand up, if shakily. In the rapidly thickening darkness, the girls stared at each other, their eyes full of hopelessness and sorrow. They did not need words to understand: the zone of temporal noise wasn't just dangerous, as they thought. Death was waiting for them there, immediate and unavoidable, after the first dozen steps. It wasn't risky to take a shortcut, it was not possible. The hurricane wind was flapping their clothing and hair, the ground was vibrating with such a force that their hands and feet touching it were itching and numbing. A hailstorm of boulders was falling from the sky hacking away at the rocky ground around them.

The medallion emitted a shrill signal heard even through the all-penetrating rumble. A radiation warning. The girls came to their senses and looked around. They felt a surge of hope: the vortex was slowing down! The lower the black doom loomed, the slower it was approaching the ground!

Ranma pushed Akane in the shoulder pointing at the medallion. The redhead herself stood watching for the rocks incoming from the darkness. It was almost impossible to notice flying boulders and whole crags: the roaring darkness became almost impenetrable by that moment. Miss one, or be too slow to dodge - and you'll stay forever on this mountaintop, in a thin layer. It was very disconcerting for Ranma to realize that a danger not usually lethal for her turned into a risk to become a wet smear.

Akane figured their way and they dashed to the right, against the wind. There it was, the final loop! The hurricane force wind was pushing them back, threatening to blow them off their feet. Stumbling and supporting each other, they overcame its push reaching a bend. They turned around a death zone outcrop to the left, desperately pushing with their feet to slow their movement and not let the wind suck them up and carry them into the roaring meat-grinder.

The pyramid emerged first as a constant cracking that stood out from the overall roar, rocks smashing against the unyielding walls of the edifice. Then it greeted them with a hail of small shards slashing at the girls painfully. Finally they stumbled onto a slanted wall praying that the entrance won't be on the opposite side. They were very lucky: a force field covering the entrance emerged a half dozen steps ahead, glowing dully. Pushing with the last of their strength, flat against the pyramid wall, they let the wind carry them to it. Barely managing to push through the resilient, opalescent membrane they fell to their knees and hands, breathing hoarsely in the silence of the mirror hall. There was only a quiet, menacing hum reaching through the force field and Ranma wondered how they managed to get through it if it was so powerful.

Not even taking time to catch her breath, Akane started tapping the keys with her shaking fingers.

Right, thought Ranma. We have to go. No one can tell how long this pyramid would hold. Forget the pyramid, it'll uproot the whole mountain any moment now! She turned back, crawling warily away from the entrance arch visible clearly thanks to the dull opalescence of the membrane. Like a liquid pearl or swirls of milk in coffee. Her wariness proved justified as something crashed against the field bending it in. Flashing for a brief moment with concentric rings, the ephemeral barrier straightened returning to the weak glow of opalescence. Ranma was surprised to notice that the floor wasn't vibrating at all. It was creepy: that thing outside was probably grinding the whole mountain into gravel, but here, inside, it was eerily calm. The silence was broken only by the quiet hum from the entrance and the sound of Akane tapping the keys.

She got no time to contemplate on this further as the hall was flooded with light and Akane shouted "Go!" as she tore the layers of blackened gauze off her face.

Ranma didn't need a second invitation.

(シーンブレイク)

Saturn materialized on an edge of a giant crater. There was atmosphere present - and, it seems, it was breathable! The girl's spirits lifted. The endless attempts to teleport back to earth wore at her until she was feeling numb. Did she make it at last? She started looking around eagerly. The dark rock under her feet was rising from a white shroud of snow in serrated ridges. A dull disc of the Sun was half-hidden by the horizon. Below, under the rocky slopes, a frozen plain of an ocean was stretching wide and far.

Definitely Earth. And the crater — she felt an unmistakable mystic 'aftertaste' in the air — was all that remained of the Dark Kingdom, an impressive reminder for the enemies not to mess with Sailor Moon. Pity that the spell of unnoticeability put by Beryl on this Arctic island still held, so the enemies had tendency to miss the hint.

Saturn sat down on a rock and sighed. She would not dare testing her fate by teleporting again. She'd prefer to walk and swim from here to Tokyo, however many thousand kilometers separated her from home.

(シーンブレイク)

April 30, 2012. Translated June 12, 2012. Last correction April 13, 2016.

 **Ding!** Tropes unlocked:  
Brought Down to Badass

 **Author's notes:**

 **1**  
Nodoka (長閑 or のどか) means "Tranquil"

 **2**  
"Rem" - Roentgen equivalent man. Measures absorbed dose in rads with a correction according to various factors that affecting how harmful the absorbed radiation is for a living organism. Is equal to rad for gamma radiation. Akane is way too optimistic about this, as one Rem is a significant dose. 1000 is definitely lethal, while 200 will probably make you wish it was lethal. Sievert is a modern unit equal to 100 Rem.

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— Crystal  
— Pusakuronu  
— Orphus users (15 bugs so far)


	12. The Charm of Natural Wilderness

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled**

 **Chapter 12  
The Charm of Natural Wilderness**

(シーンブレイク)

Ranma felt immense relief when she found herself and Akane in a sparse tropical forest. It wasn't just because of the chorus of sounds proclaiming "Life thrives here. And how!"

Something reviviscent was returning, like a gulp of icy water after a parched desert. Only now, when it was gone, they could comprehend the scale of the weight that had been oppressing them.

Ki was working again. The girls flew in huge leaps rebounding off springy palm trees. Their backpacks regained the weight of a feather.

"Wait," Ranma injected between leaps. "Are we going... in the right direction?"

Her wife didn't have time to reply as the forest ended. The girls landed on a beach of white sand. A crisp blue lagoon stretched before them, covered with slight ripples. Tropical sun was pouring its heat from the sky adorned with rare puffs of white clouds.

Akane opened the medallion digging in it for a while. She then walked up to the surf where small waves were lapping at the sand. She tried to see something at the left but there was a small peninsula overgrown with palm trees posing an obstacle that way. She unfastened her heavy ankle-boots throwing them off and walked further away from the shore trying to take a look beyond the peninsula. The water was very shallow here so she had passed about twenty meters when it rose above her knees. Small waves were splashing at her threatening to wet her trousers up to her undies.

"What's so important there?" Ranma finally unwrapped the gauze from her head. She critically examined it. Blackened from _radioactive_ ·dust it probably wasn't suitable even as rags. She had to wash her clothes too! The redhead walked to the shore to taste the water. It was oceanic salty. It was better to wait until they come upon a sweet water source, or the silk will end all covered in salt splotches.

Akane walked out of the water and started bounding in huge leaps to the left, towards the peninsula. Ranma followed her. From the tip of the peninsula they managed, at last, to see a tiny blue triangle on the horizon. It was barely discernible against the sky.

"Bugger," Akane commented digging again in the medallion. "It's right in the center of this lagoon.

Ranma glanced at a chain of islands overgrown with palm trees to the left of them. It receded into distance in a relatively straight line, not exactly in the direction they needed. "What about running to the closest island first? We can go much faster by land than by swimming anyway."

"Are you mocking me?" Akane glared at her.

"No, no," Ranma backed away. "I got an inflatable air-bed! I'll tug you."

"Oh... Good thinking..." Akane peered at the screen estimating something and swearing at the awkward controls. "There are no islands at that side, only shallows and the reef. But we can go to the last island and swim from there." She closed the medallion.

"All right. All the more so it's ebb now."

The girls dashed along the coast, at times cutting by palm tree tops when the shore formed a point. But there it was, the first strait between the islands.

"It seems shallow, we probably can ford it," Ranma noted while she pulled her clothes off. She rolled them up intent of putting the bundle away in her backpack.

"Wait, you'll contaminate our things with radioactive dust," Akane tried to stop her.

"I've rolled it inside out—"

"No, that won't do," Akane cut her off flatly. "Wash it. Salt won't ruin it right away. We have our food in that backpack."

"All in plastic wrappings—"

"And our pot, without any wrappings. Try to recall what Ami told us about swallowing particles."

"I remember it, all right," Ranma grumbled as she walked deeper, in only her boxers, and started rinsing her clothing.

"Don't forget your hair," Akane added as she joined her.

Ranma glanced at her and froze, staring. Akane undressed — meaning she took off everything — and was now imitating a racoon, water foaming around her hands from the rapid motion. Then she bent down dipping her head and did the same to her hair. A goofy, dreamy smile bloomed on the redhead's face against her will.

Akane straightened up, snorting the water out. She noticed the pigtailed girl standing here staring at her. Her eyes reflected a tug-o-war of contradicting emotions that culminated in a fierce "Are you here to wash or to ogle me with that stupid smile?"

Ranma hastily turned around and started to rinse. She failed to banish the smile from her face, though. It made her feel foolish. Her spouse's words 'for you, I will become a full lesbian' by some reason kept floating in her mind. Lately he kept catching herself... himself... whatever, thinking about going, ahem, all the way, in her current form. It was both creeping Ranma out and thrilling for some reason. But, to this day, any approaches in the female form ended only in in impressive explosions: Akane's feelings for him, which were still there, reacted violently with her allergic homophobia.

Akane returned wearing her swimsuit. She began vigorously rinsing backpacks she emptied of their content. Ranma tried to argue against playing 'overtly-safe' but Akane made her take her boxers off and rinse these along with the kung-fu slippers. Then she undid the redhead's pigtail and washed her hair with such energy that the other girl saw sparks flying from her eyes.

They returned to the shore and put their supplies back into the backpack, tying their wrung out clothes on top, to dry in the sun. Ranma's hair was put up into a pigtail, to avoid losing time. Akane, on her own insistence, tied the end of the slightly wavy tail with a ribbon, making a small bow.

"Let's go." The redhead slung the damp backpack onto her shoulders and started walking towards the strait. Wearing only her backpack and showing proudly to the world that she was a natural redhead.

Akane let out a loud, expressive cough.

"What? There's no one here." Ranma made innocent eyes gesturing around the horizon.

"Well, assume the portal leads us to a crowded place, you _baka_?" Akane inquired snarkily as she crossed her arms. "Ami was giving some vague hints at that when she told me about Usagi's position. How would you look then? Especially if something happens at the pyramid leavinggiving you no time to dress?"

Ranma turned beet red and hastily grabbed for her backpack, to pull her swimsuit out.

They started fording the strait. It was only a couple hundred meters wide. Somewhere around halfway water reached their chest making them take their backpacks off and carry these overhead. Ranma would reach the shore faster by swimming, but the speed of a caravan always equals the speed of its slowest camel. Despite all her efforts and training Akane still possessed the buoyancy of a hammer.

"Let's inflate the air-bed," Ranma said when water reached her necks. Akane was wobbly on her feet, biting her lip as her fear was rising. The current was pushing them, slowly but irresistibly, towards the faraway reef where waves of open ocean were crashing thunderously.

"Wait, I have an idea," Akane said handing Ranma her backpack. "Would you cover for me?"

"Of course." Ranma frowned in confusion seeing her spouse turn back towards the shore. "What are you planning?"

"Well, you aren't the only one entitled to creating insane techniques, aren't you?" Akane replied not explaining anything.

While Akane was trudging towards the shore Ranma quickly swam across the deep place. Leaping to the beach she put backpacks down on the grass under palm trees. Then she returned to the surf, utterly puzzled.

"Ready?" Akane shouted across two hundred meters separating them.

"Yeah!"

Akane aimed, then leaped onto a nearby palm tree. It recoiled launching her back at the sand of the beach. The raven-haired girl in a green one-piece started running so fast that her legs blurred, even to Ranma's trained eye. Leaving a trail of kicked up sand she dashed towards water. She ran into the sea. And continued running in a foamy swash leaving a wake like a hydrofoil boat.

Ranma boggled. Akane's rapid approach was accompanied by a battle cry growing louder. She was sinking no deeper than knee level. Now she was halfway through the strait. Now two thirds. She started losing her balance. She stumbled on an especially large wave, her battle cry turning into a shriek of terror. Windmilling her arms and legs Akane flopped flat on her belly, rebounded a couple times off the water and finally came to a stop after plowing the beach with her nose.

"Cool!" the redhead approved sincerely as she helped her heaving wife up. "But still needs a lot of work to master." Akane just nodded, unable yet to speak.

They ran forward. Kilometers were flying by, the gaps between islands were being crossed in the same way. Sometimes Akane was able to run successfully across a strait, her record being half a kilometer — after which she had to lie down for a few minutes. Sometimes she was stumbling which lead to her starting to drown. One time Ranma had to save her from a strait fifty meters wide and barely waist-deep. But if Akane started drowning even the bottom under her feet couldn't dissuade her.

But here it was, the last island. There was only the crisp blue stretch of lagoon ahead, with a foamy line of the reef to the left and a dark-blue pointy triangle of the pyramid still far away.

Straining, Ranma inflated the air-bed by blowing, her puffed cheeks reddening from the strain. Obviously, she had not deemed taking a pump necessary. The air-bed proved to be an airy thing of transparent plastic from one side and deep blue from the other. Akane took her position on it, grabbing the backpacks so tightly her knuckles went white. Soon she turned from an active participant of the jorney into an eyes-shut-tightly passively tugged object. These escapades cost her, Ranma thought as she pushed the air-bed in front of her. Challenging her greatest fear time and again, especially after her first fall, it's like I would have trained using cats!

She shuddered.

For Ranma who was able to swim across the entire Sea of Japan the remaining kilometers were a joke. There were no sharks nor barracudas. Here was the pyramid, at last. Resting on the bottom, it was flooded. Depth here was almost equal to the arch height and Ranma had to push the air-bed under the edge. The backpacks got dipped a bit, Akane felt her back submerging, accompanied with the harrowing squeaks of the air-bed rubbing against the arch edges. Panicking, she reared up and barely avoided smashing her nose against the ki-defying surface.

Ranma thought they'd have big problems if water stood just a few centimeters higher. They were lucky, this looked to be the lowest point of the ebb.

Inside the pyramid there was a familiar hall: a half-spherical faceted ceiling, a perfect mirror for the floor — flooded, lit by scattered light coming through a thick layer of water it made for an amazing sight. However, only Ranma was able to admire the beauty of it. Akane was at the limit of her willpower, her fear rising, feeding on itself. The short-haired girl did not want to be an useless load anymore. There was water all around her, yawning predatorily, waiting, ready to swallow her. She felt nauseated, so strong was her fear. Akane hastily tapped in a command to open the portal, not only foregoing to check the coordinates but not even giving herself time to think about consequences.

The familiar mechanical voice rang under the multifaceted dome voicing a warning: "Attention! Safety condition 18 detected! Preemptive blocking will be employed! Five seconds to cancel!" Akane didn't cancel anything, so five seconds later they were submerged in complete darkness as the only entrance closed cutting them off from the outside world. The mechanical voice continued its monologue in darkness reciting safety conditions this and that, urging to take measures according articles twelve and one hundred thirty five, droning and droning on.

"Don't you, screw something up," Ranma's voice reached Akane from somewhere nearby. Akane had opened her eyes a while ago, but there was little use. There was nothing to look at beside the medallion screen displaying countdown.

"Don't worry, I know what I am doing," Akane replied irritably, beginning to worry herself.

"Says you," Ranma echoed without enthusiasm.

And the countdown reached zero. And the hall was flooded with light, accompanied with a victorious roar of a thousand cubic meters of water rushing through the wide opening of the portal. With said water containing summarily two girls, one air-bed and two backpacks.

Ranma would've held against the current on her own. But as the portal opened in an arch close to them, the resulting whirpool immediately started sucking the air-bed in, rotating it rapidly. Akane screamed in terror, started thrashing and tumbled off of it. She was sucked in instantly. Ranma dove after her. They were already outside, in the raging water jet, when she caught up with her wife and grabbed the drowning girl with both her arms trying to shield her with her body.

The girls crashed through sharp remains of broken tree branches. They splashed down into liquid dirt. Then a half thousand tons of water landed on top of them spinning them like twigs as it washed them away.

As they cleared up their lungs and wiped their eyes, they found themselves lodged deeply in mud: they managed to land in a small bog encircled with huge trees. A receding waterfall was flowing noisily from high on in the branches of the nearest tree as the portal was disgorging the last bits of ocean water. Then the portal disappeared with a resounding click. Without water flowing, one backpack and shreds of blue plastic became visible among the broken branches.

"Our flotation means is totaled," Ranma stated as she tried to move towards the shore but only managed to sink deeper. "Could you have aimed it more precisely? So that we'd land in the exact center of this quagmire?" The bog was tiny, no more than a half hundred meters across.

There were no signs of their second backpack. The liquid dirt mixed with moss and roots, mixed up and diluted with a good helping of sea water wasn't holding them at all. It was slowly sucking the girls into its putrescent embrace. They were already deeper than their waist and the process wasn't stopping.

"Do you see your backpack?" Ranma started pulling forcefully, rowing with her arms to overcome the resistance of the quagmire. Like a fly on fly paper.

"No!" Akane snapped angrily. "How could I?" She wasn't trilled at all to be stuck in the slime and vile. Especially when her thrashing, no less forceful than Ranma's, only led to her sinking up to her chest. "Err, It's embarrassing to say this, but could you save me please?" Her ki-reinforced body was easily overcoming any resistance the quagmire could put, but sadly, any movement led her _down_. The fear of drowning that seemed to release her returned with vengeance plunging its icy tentacles into the core of her being.

"A moment, I'll just climb out myself!" Ranma said as she tore towards the shore with splorching and slurping sounds, time and again grabbing at huge leaves, some green strands and other plant stuff. The greenery kept tearing out but that couldn't stop her advance.

Akane froze trying not to breathe. And still she continued to submerge, millimeter by millimeter. An icy paw of fear was caressing her, making the sinking girl breathe through her teeth.

Gradually peace returned to the upheaved bog, its habitants renewing their warbling, singing and croaking. The medallion's shrill and rattly voice joined this chorus: "Alarm! Detecting a multitude of sanguivorous life forms in the air! Deterring system power is insufficient!"

One didn't need this yell to notice a gray mist of mosquitoes starting to billow over the untouched parts of the bog.

"Catch!" Ranma broke a small tree with a sharp crack so that its leafy crown landed on top of Akane of whom there was only the head visible. The panicking girl clutched at the branches with a death grip. The redhead plucked her out like a carrot.

"Thank you," Akane breathed out trying to catch her breath. She lost it more to fear than to exertion. "You know, I don't want to stay here in only my swimsuit," she added as she smacked rapidly at several mosquitoes who already managed to molest her. The main cloud hadn't even reached them yet.

"Don't worry, I'll just grab my backpack and we're outta here!" Ranma rapidly climbed the tree. "Oh! Look, there it is, your backpack!" She pointed at somewhere in the bog.

Akane saw her backpack now, barely sticking out of the mud. Not wasting time, she broke a thicker tree with a loud kiai. It fell not exactly as she planned but she never the less ran along the trunk hurrying to fish her backpack out while it wasn't sucked in yet. She climbed to thin branches, these bent under her weight making her sink up to her knees. Hesitating for a moment she laid down into the muck with an outcry of disgust. She started crawling towards the backpack while holding onto a branch with her feet and quickly sinking deeper. Grabbing the backpack she started wriggling out of the sticky goo pulling herself in with her legs and barely avoiding dipping her face in.

"Do you need a hand?" Ranma asked worriedly.

"I'll manage by myself!" Akane waved her concerns aside as she grabbed a branch with her hand. She was again up to her neck in the quagmire but now, having purchase, it wasn't that scary. She quickly pulled out tearing herself out of the sticky muck with a mighty jerk. She was already standing up on the tree trunk when she felt something touching her thigh. Akane almost fell back down in her panicked grab for it. She felt something thick and wriggling in her grip and tore it away from her leg.

"Aargh, it's disgusting!" she howled when she saw her catch.

"What? What is it?" Ranma ran up to her wife. The tree started sinking under their combined weight, their feet disappearing in the dirty water. "Whoa! Is that a _leech_?"

The balack, wriggling slug-alike body was half a meter long, thick as Akane's biceps. It displayed impressive incisors, almost like that of beaver. Akane realized that this _thing_ ·almost got her femoral artery. She felt ill. (note 1) Dismayed, she dashed towards the shore almost jostling Ranma off the log.

"Alarm! Biologic threat! Aggressive environment!" the medallion yelled belatedly. "Detecting approach of eighty three analogous life forms!"

Ranma glanced at her feet. She was knee deep in the goo as the log continued sinking. A blink of an eye later she was on the shore. "By the way, I'm still interested in finding out where we are," she reminded her not-too-subtly about someone's blunder. "Is this even the right world?" She punted a few leeches back into the bog as they crawled out. Then she started slapping at incoming mosquitoes. "Hurry up. If we have to go back, better to do it while they haven't arrived en masse."

"A moment!" Akane grabbed for the medallion but realized she was still holding the leech. Willing her locked up fingers open with a supreme effort she threw the thing into the bog, then finally opened the mud-covered medallion. "No, it's the right world. I just... missed a bit. It's six kilometers that way." She pointed with her arm.

"All right, let's go!" The redhead grabbed her backpack. Then she blurted out, tempting fate: "So far no other beast had crawled in on us!"

Of course her asking for it bore fruit.

"Danger!" the medallion howled "Detecting a large carnivorous life form!" This was a cue for an immense T. rex to emerge from the thicket. The girls stared wearily up at the carnivorous theropod. The carnivorous theropod stared appraisingly down at the girls as it cocked its head to the side.

"Here we go..." Ranma sighed crackling her knuckles.

The dinosaur rushed them unhurriedly, sure of his superiority. The girls exchanged glances and performed a synchronous kick to his jaw when the beast tilted down to chomp on them. He was too high to punt him properly otherwise as they wouldn't reach his scaly belly. Kicking at the legs thick as a bear would just drop him to his side at best.

The T. rex didn't fly far: he weighed around six tons, after all. Still, he landed ponderously on his back breaking several trees, his legs dangling in the air for a moment.

"Heh, he isn't as badass as they paint him," Ranma snorted derisively. "Let's go?"

"I hope we didn't kill him?" Akane asked as she lifted her dirty backpack onto her even more dirty shoulders.

"Nah, don't worry," Ranma said nonchalantly. "He'll come to till evening. Next time he'll think twice whom he intends to eat."

They had walked around the bog when an angry roar washed over their backs like a tangible wave. It sounded extremely low and menacing. The girls turned around. The tyrannosaur was already up. He stood with his head low, his tail swishing angrily left and right, held high in the air. Seeing them looking at him, he roared again, ploughing ground up with one foot, then with another one. He looked like an incarnate of vengeful malice, there were only glowing eyes missing.

"Creepy." Akane shievered.

"Screw him," Ranma muttered irritably as she leaped onto a suitable tree. "Come on, let's run. We can reach Usagi in half an hour or less. Besides, I'm itching to wash up. After that bog I feel smeared in shit."

The dirty girls clad in swimsuits barely visible under the layer of stinky grime started moving quickly leaping from tree branch to tree branch. They were followed by a receding angry roar: the T. rex went totally apeshit when he saw the insolent mammals weren't staying for a séance of retribution.

Tree-hopping ninja style requires concentration as one's attention is always on choosing a next suitable branch. This method of locomotion isn't conductive to admiring scenery. So they haven't even noticed at first that their path started curling upwards. However, after one more minute the jungle ended, replaced with a rocky mountainside covered with copses of bushes. They had to go up as their destination lay in the direction at the shining snow-covered peaks. Luckily it was much closer.

"We'd better wash up somewhere and dress, if there are people going to be there," Ranma noted. Then she added under her breath: "She's calling that 'missed a bit'... It's good ki works here." She touched a smarting spot on her side, a reminder of her slamming smack into a sharp, iron-hard broken branch when they fell out of the portal.

The land looked arid, so they used their chance when they came upon a creek streaming its icy waters through round pebbles and boulders. They tore their swimsuits off, these were starting to dry and glue to their skin. They washed themselves in the painfully cold water, then started washing their swimsuits along with their other clothing: tied on top of the backpacks it got its fair share of swamp muck.

After that it became obvious what sticky, vile things their backpacks were. They didn't want to be held up so close to their goal but putting these backpacks on would be wasting all their washing efforts. So they hurriedly emptied the backpacks and went to wash them after they hung their clothing around on the bushes. It wasn't going to dry completely, but they hoped it'll do some. There was a weak but piercing wind blowing from the peaks.

Akane's ability to sense killing intent was the only thing that allowed her to dodge. There was no sound, not a single branch popped, when she suddenly found herself rolling desperately to the side, not even comprehending yet why. Five-inch teeth snapped shut where she was a moment ago! Akane stared in bewilderment up at the tyrannosaurus looming over her. He repeated his attempt to make mince-meat of her, forcing the girl time and again to roll across round rocks in the icy water. The only sounds of battle were splashing, rocks grinding under the feet of the trampling dinosaur and the snapping of his teeth.

A second later Ranma's shout joined in as the redhead slammed outstretched leg first into the dinosaur's head. He stumbled but did not fall. Akane jumped onto her feet and bounded away. Seeing that his sneak attack failed, the tyrannosaur lowered his head and roared, directing angry glares at both girls in turn.

"How did this hulk sneak up on us?" Ranma said with mixed annoyance and admiration.

"I don't know, but now we have to defeat him somehow. We need to dress!" Akane said stating the obvious.

"We have to deal with him permanently, at that," Ranma added as she squinted nastily at the overgrown predator. "Coming out to people with this thing trailing us would be crassly irresponsible."

The dinosaur roared rushing her with persistence worth of better uses. The redhead jumped away with ease...

"Our things!" Akane shouted out in panic as she dashed to intercept. "Watch where you retreat!"

Ranma saw that the multi-ton beast was almost on top of their supplies. She hurriedly jumped aside, then moved closer opening deliberately to lure him away: "Here! Here!"

The T. rex turned around and managed to step on something as he stepped in place. Lowering his head again he roared at Ranma angrily, promising he'd tear her to itty-bitty pieces, just let him catch her!

"Aren't you like Kunou!" Ranma smirked. "Got any common relatives?"

The dinosaur tried to incinerate her with his glare - unsuccessfully - and dug the earth up with his legs like an angry bull. Supplies he haven't trampled yet flew in all directions, mixed with rocks and clumps of earth.

"Why, you!" Akane roared. "Take this, you jerk! Raitsui Dan!"

The ki blast slammed into the dinosaur's side. But it just made him stumble, throwing him back a bit. He stepped backwards, right into the bushes where their clothing was hanging. Crushing them noisily.

"Mokou Takabisha!" Ranma launched her own ki blast as she saw they were about to be left without clothing and supplies. It slammed right into the maw opened wide to let out another roar. But even that did not stop the dinosaur. Shaking his head he sat on his tail, flattening bushes and clothing alike under his weight. Akane leaped at him while he hadn't regained his senses yet, afraid he'd grind the clothing to dust.

The T. rex managed to see through her move — it was that straight right punch, telegraphed widely and visible from a kilometer away, that was her shameful undoing in her first duel against Shampoo, but who could have thought an _animal_ ·would be able to read it? — and bit preemptively with amazing precision. Akane was saved only by her reaction speed. Twisting in mid-air, she slammed with her parted feet into the tip of his jaws instead of crashing into the gaping maw. Rebounding awkwardly, she landed in a vulnerable position and had to roll around again dodging the snapping jaws. A couple of broken teeth didn't discourage the beast in the slightest.

"That's it," growled Ranma. "You asked for it!" The tyrannosaur had trampled the bushes where their clothing was hanging into a broken mess while he was rising up to his feet. "If you left me without my favorite shirt..." She dashed towards the insufferable predator. He managed to kick at her with his left leg without interrupting his attempts to chomp down on the rolling Akane, his tail sticking almost straight up. Ranma dodged easily, raining hard blows on his right leg. The dinosaur lost his balance and stumbled, trying simultaneously to back away and bite her to get her out from between his legs.

Freed, Akane leaped at him, aiming at the neck. But the dinosaur managed to dodge, backpedaling with sudden swiftness and almost stepping on Ranma in the process. The long-suffering bushes were crunching again, the creek shores rapidly turning into a mess of broken branches. This had no effect on the dinosaur while posing some obstacle for the girls.

It was awkward to hit the long-legged, dodging thing: while standing on the ground, they could only reach his legs bulging with stone-hard muscles and the snapping maw. Beating at the latter was dangerous. Beating at both wasn't bringing any discernible results. A few more broken teeth only made the tyrannosaur angrier.

They tried to leap so they could hit his neck and other vulnerable spots. But doing that, they were losing their advantage in agility. They had to move by predictable trajectories while he kept his agility as he was standing on the ground. The bastard could bite preemptively seeing through their moves. Ranma kept twisting away and even managed one solid hit at his eye. Akane twisted once, twice, then fumbled and barely managed to jerk her shoulder and arm out from between the closing teets.

Ranma felt cold when she noticed a reddish imprint on her beloved's shoulder. These teeth looked able to crush solid rock! Granted, the T. rex was much smaller than Orochi but he could still snap your arm off with ease.

She gestured to Akane: let's flank him. The raven-haired girl understood her instantly, used to fighting together in their endless battles against the youma.

He couldn't defend from two opposing directions, especially with one eye bruised. They started inflicting rare but powerful hits as they kept leaping at the dinosaur. He countered this by backing into the bushes, where they couldn't jump. There was only the gaping maw left sticking out. Akane tried to get close by just breaking through the mess of branches, but these proved durable enough to slow her down, thus negating her main advantage. This mistake almost became her last. She barely managed to dodge by diving into the cramped space below the lowest branches. She then had to scramble madly on all fours, zig-zagging to flee from the snapping death.

"Mokou Takabisha!" Ranma fell literally from the sky as she jumped a dozen meters up, over the bushes, slamming her ki blast into the thing's spine. He sagged from the blow, then turned towards the rustling that gave away her landing spot. He roared angrily.

"Raitsui Dan!" Akane didn't waste time. Rolling onto her back, she launched her ki blast from below. It hit the dinosaur under his tail, making him choke on his roar and fall on his muzzle.

"What does it take to bring this thing down!" Ranma exclaimed indignantly when the T. rex started getting up, pulling his legs in one by one and helping himself with his small forepaws. Letting out a short growl, he rushed at her, limping on his right leg. Ranma thought of jumping onto his back and beating him from there. Then she saw Akane gaining on him along the path he made in the bushes. She was stumbling on broken branches. She'll get caught again! Ranma decided to take a calculated risk. After all, this worked with crocodiles, so why not? Her wife had too many close calls already and could use some breathing room. "Akane, start beating him with all you got! I'll hold him up!" She jumped right into the descending maw. Her knees shot out, each one slamming into the jaw tip right inside the narrow arch formed by the front teeth. The dinosaur tried to close his jaws, and her eyes widened in sudden fright: the biting force of this thing was phenomenal, no crocodile could even compare! Ranma grunted, shuddering in desperate effort to keep this trap from shutting. The T. rex put all his might into crushing her. This was insane! How many tons of force could he bring to bear so that it was almost too much even for her? Was his prey made of steel? Refusing to become dinosaur chow, the redhead put all she had into straightening her legs into a perfect split. Finally she succeeded, forcing the jaws even wider. Now she was lodged fast, no chance of him opening wider to shake her out. As a bonus benefit, her leg and hip bones were now taking the brunt of the effort, letting her aching leg muscles rest a bit. This was... "Ack! Yeech! Why, you!" The dinosaur tried to push her out with his tongue, so now she had to fight this appendage too, using her arms to keep it away from her. It was all muscle and rough like sandpaper. "Akane, don't dawdle there!"

The dinosaur was swishing his head from side to side, stumbling through the bushes blindly like a drunk. The pigtailed girl kept holding his maw wide open. The other girl kept hitting the unyielding underside uncontested while the predator tried to pick the oh-so-wrong prey out of his mouth. He bent his neck, trying to get at her with his smallish forepaw. This pose was even less stable and he couldn't even kick. Akane used this to her full advantage, punching at his neck or tail, whatever happened closer to the ground. Ranma dodged a couple of times, displaying amazing feats of flexibility. Then she abandoned the tongue and grabbed the muscled forepaw in an unbreakable hold. After which the tyrannosaur started spinning in place, occasionally kicking at Akane who was beating him up. He concentrated all his efforts on freeing his forepaw. Ranma was groaning from the strain, swearing at the tongue slobbering her up, but she didn't let the extremity go. An Anything-goes practitioner isn't some triceratops for you!

Finally, the sum of received bruises outweighed the theropod's attitude. The animal turned tail and started fleeing, accompanied with Akane's yells "Stop! Stop, you jerk! Give my Ranma back!" Consumed by worry for her spouse she gave the opponent an opening, and the dinosaur sent her flying with a deft flick of his tail. Tumbling head over heels she landed in broken bushes and stuck thrashing there without a purchase. The T. rex stomping and Ranma's swearing quickly receded disappearing in the distance.

"Ranmaaaa!" Akane tore free, at last. She rushed along the trail of broken bushes the predator left in his hasty retreat.

"I'm here!" The redhead appeared from the thicket ahead, wiping at herself with disgust. Her disheveled hair was sticking to her skin, the pigtail long ruined. "Yuck, he slobbered all over me!" She hurried to the creek to wash up.

"Wait! He got you!" Akane shouted in alarm as she noticed a bloody stripe across Ranma's side.

"Nah, it's back when we fell out of the portal," the redhead waved her concerns aside. "Fell smack into a branch. Stop fretting so much, it's just an abrasion." She flopped down into the icy water. "Brr! You'd better check if we have at least our panties left. Or would we have to go out in some kind of grass skirts?"

Akane hurried towards the place where their things were stashed. The losses turned out to be amazingly light: all the instant ramen got ground into the ground, as well as Ranma's swimsuit which was useless even as rags now. Everything else was relatively intact, if dirty and rumpled. They washed their clothing for the third time and pulled it on, wet as it was. They were suddenly very aware of the wind they hadn't been noticing during the fight.

"What would we eat on our way back?" Akane asked as she finished bandaging Ranma's side with an adhesive patch. Unlike her husband, she had practically no wilderness survival skills. Well, except the usual 'take more supplies from the fridge, ride a train as close to your destination as possible, go the rest of your way on foot'. Their mutual experience of surviving in Jadeite's world was of little help here: they only had to steal from the enemy fields where everything was already grown by someone else.

"Things we could hunt for, what else?" The redhead tied her shirt up. "Rabbits, whatever you have." She cast a vengeful glance in the direction the T. rex had disappeared to. "I now feel sorry I let the bastard go. Should have finished him off and used for ham."

They ran on forward: Usagi was at an arm's length!

(シーンブレイク)

May 28, 2012. Translated June 22, 2012.

 **Ding!** Tropes unlocked:  
Super Persistent Predator

 **Author's notes:**

 **1**  
Femoral artery passes very close to the surface on the inner side of the upper thigh, making this spot as fatally vulnerable to slashing damage as one's throat.

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— Crystal  
— Pusakuronu  
— Orphus users (21 bugs so far)


	13. A Deadly Hope

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled**

 **Chapter 13  
A Deadly Hope**

(シーンブレイク)

The closer to their goal they got, the higher into the mountains they went. The wind grew sharper, especially piercing for them in their wet clothing. It was easier for Ranma, whose silk shirt and pants dried very fast. Akane fared much worse in her camouflage pants, jacket and sweatshirt.

A pack of some small predators proved a handy warmup as they jumped the girls, suddenly ambushing them. A moment ago, it was serenely calm, and then the martial artists were desperately twisting and dodging to defend themselves from wicked claws and toothy maws coming from everywhere at once. Losing just one of their numbers, the attackers scattered, disappearing in the bushes as swiftly as they had emerged. Ranma grabbed the killed, bizarre critter and attached it to her backpack by its broken neck.

"What do you need it for?" Akane asked, examining their trophy. It turned to be some mix of a bird and a lizard. The size of a small dog, it had a long tail, a maw full of small but sharp teeth, and huge, wicked claws on its front paws that were adorned with short feathers like some mockery of wings. However, the claws on its hind legs were even bigger and nastier. The body of this snappish nuisance was covered with bright orange fur, black stripes running across the back and tail. It was like a tiger with a stylish plume of white and black feathers on the tip of its tail.

"We'll roast it for dinner," Ranma explained patronizingly. "We'll have to track back with Usagi. What do you think, how many days would it take? We can't go back through the death world, there's that radioactive hashushaito sitting right next to the entrance." She started tying her hair into a pigtail as she walked; the ponytail proved to be impractical with her current hair length, it kept getting in the way, and during the skirmish it had untied, ending up with her hair all mussy and sticking to her face.

The slopes they were walking on were turning more and more into a sparse grassland. A few times, they met some sort of herbivorous dinosaurs, approximately three elephants in size. These were grazing peacefully. There was one time the girls met a huge pack of familiar tiger-striped carnivores busy flaying the bulk of such a herbivore. These restrained themselves to shrieking menacingly, especially when they saw their brethren hanging limply from the backpack. They followed the girls with wary and hostile eyes before returning to their meal. Two kilometers later, the next pack happened to be either more hungry or less prudent. The girls were delayed again, having to explain it to them that humans in general and martial artists in particular are a bad choice of food.

"How could people live here?" Ranma asked a rhetorical question as she straightened her backpack, which was now sporting a small ragged hole. "Do they sit cooped up in some underground bunkers or what? And what manner of critter is this?" She shifted one of small carcasses with her foot. "I'd say they resemble small dinosaurs. But fur? And feathers?"

"Ask something simple, will you." Akane just increased her pace. "We have to find Usagi quickly! I don't like this carnivore preserve."

The higher into the mountains they got, the colder it was getting. Animals gradually disappeared, along with the grass. There was only wind whiffing across rocks, and rare trees, low and gnarled. Thankfully, Akane's clothing had finally dried. Even as well trained as she was, the piercing wind was discomforting.

Their path unobtrusively emerged into a wide valley squeezed between mountain branches. The familiar creek was flowing through its middle. Gradually, signs of human habitation started to appear here and there: ruined foundations of rough rocks, remains of some fences. Then a barely noticeable beaten path appeared, becoming a bit more pronounced after a couple more kilometers.

"Looks like we've found the people," Ranma stated as a wall emerged from a sharp bend in the valley. It wasn't the Great China wall, but it was blocking the valley from side to side, merging with the cliffs. The valley was some three hundred meters wide, at it's narrowest. When they walked closer, they assessed the wall height as five to six meters. Made from large, uncut boulders, it showed no sign of a gate. There was only a low drain barred with a massive rusty grate, the creek gurgling merrily between its bars. There were sharp stakes adorning the top of the wall, sticking out at random angles like the hide of an especially unkempt porcupine.

Ranma was aiming to clear the wall in one jump when she felt Akane's elbow colliding with her ribs. "What?" She didn't get it.

Akane silently pointed with her eyes to the closest of the two watchtowers towering beyond the wall. There was someone leaning out of a fur-covered hut on its top. They could even discern his jaw hanging low in stupefaction.

"So?" asked Ranma. "Oh! You want us to play harmless wallflowers not out to kick someone's ass? Pity the girlies and stuff? Yeech." She scrunched her face up like she had chewed through a whole lemon in one go. "Well, this idea has merit. Who knows what sort of people live here, it could be something like that amazon village... all right, let's try this." The redhead made an effort and generated one of her most kawaii smiles, a technique perfected with use on ice-cream sellers. Looking at this outrage, Akane almost changed her mind. Seeing her husband turning his female charms up to eleven as always made her worry for his sanity.

Meanwhile, a ladder emerged from beyond the wall. It stretched higher and higher, then began to lean over the edge... Suddenly, it jerked, tumbled and slammed onto the ground this side of the wall. In its place a bearded man emerged. Leaning over the wall, he looked down. Then he scratched the back of his head and uttered something expressive and heart-felt in an unknown language.

"Bovine feces participating in a homosexual intercourse," the medallion said suddenly in its squeaky, emotionless mechanical voice. Ranma stared in stupefaction at the mechanism hanging on Akane's neck. Then she started snorting, making a titanic effort to hold the laughter in and keep her kawaii expression up.

"Better be glad it worked at all!" Akane hissed at her in a hushed voice.

"What was that?" Ranma asked in a whisper. "I mean, the translation thing." They walked up to the fallen ladder and began lifting it upright slowly, huffing and making a show of how hard it was for them.

"Ami switched it on right before we went out," Akane explained in a low voice. "But she said she didn't know how reliable it would be... There are additional conditions like visual something or other... I hope it will be translating our words as well." She started climbing up the ladder.

It turned out that the wall had no battlements nor walkways. In short it was just a fence, impressive, but not intended as a fortification. On the other side, there was an another ladder and a bearded man waiting for them below. Ranma itched to just jump down, the height was laughable. When they finished climbing down he climbed up without saying a word and started pulling the outer ladder in, huffing and swearing. _Probably_ ·swearing: the medallion was silent. Akane got nervous. Ranma reacted with the serenity of a well tended Buddha statue: after all, he and pops had traversed China without knowing the language, no big deal.

They took a look around. There were sparce fields stretching away from this side of the wall. Someone was digging in the dirt at the far edge of these. There was nothing else of note. A small distance off, there was a sort of path emerging consisting of a stripe of trampled earth, slightly more rocky than that of the fields, that led beyond a bend in the valley.

While the man was huffing and puffing as he lowered the second ladder to stand next to the first one, a guy of some fourteen years wandered from the second tower. He had the look of a snooty youngster with an extremely low self-esteem. Both were dressed in baggy pants and jackets of rough wool, with leather boots on their feet.

"Hello," Akane said with a laboured, friendly smile as she turned to the bearded man. Laboured because she happened to be standing downwind of him.

Nothing happened for several seconds, making her sweat nervously. Then, the medallion uttered something in the same gratingly squeaky voice. The phrase consisted of as many as five words, which didn't instill faith in the abilities of the hellish contraption.

The man scratched the back of his head in confusion. Then he asked her something. The language wasn't even close to anything the girls were familiar with. Beside their native tongue, they had only had English stuffed into their head in school. Other than that, they could recognize — but not understand — also French, and in Ranma's case Korean and Chinese.

"You are wise women, yes?" the medallion reacted finally. The pause was shorter this time. "From which direction/location have you walked/fell/emerged?"

While Akane was still opening her mouth, unsure how to respond, Ranma blurted out: "We got lost!" with an over-the-top sugary expression on her face, including a silly smile, in a voice that all but screamed "Me dumb blond, me no understand complex things." The youngster was _staring_ ·at her, jittery but stubbornly. That's why she hurried to finish this talk as soon as possible. She could almost physically feel him _pawing_ ·her body with his eyes.

The medallion echoed with a short phrase as Akane slammed her elbow unto Ranma's ribs while keeping an innocent look.

The man replied in a skeptical tone as he looked at the cringing Ranma's back.

"I observe that you got lost in such a way that you obtained a velociraptor," the medallion proclaimed.

They blew it! Akane thought. They did not hide the carcass of an extremely dangerous predator! Surely hunting these is considered a real heroism here.

"We are, err, searching for a missing comrade," she said, hastily trying to steer the conversation away from that topic. "A blond girl—"

"A velociraptor?" Ranma asked in disbelief as she unclasped the carcass from her backpack to look at it with a great interest. "I thought they were bigger! Well, I mean, in that movie—"

An another elbow unto her ribs shut her up.

The medallion erupted with a long phrase in local language.

The man was blinking in confusion as he listened to the translation. Then he stood there for a long time scratching the back of his head. Then he asked again uncertainly, something as long.

"You are searching for a blond-furred female, the mate of this velociraptor, who is bigger than moving pictures, yes?" the medallion translated dispassionately. "Either I look curved or this your medium is rotten."

Akane wanted to strangle Ranma right then and there. Or smash the medallion to pieces. Or both, pretty please.

"No, we are searching for a girl," she corrected hastily all the while trying to incinerate Ranma with her glare.

The medallion was silent.

Akane turned to the man looking at him helplessly. The man said something.

"I preferably will/do bring/lead you to the head," the medallion translated.

"That's good," Ranma agreed as she was on the edge: the youngster continued to paw her with his eyes in all the inappropriate places, making the redhead's fists itch. Her kawaii expression was becoming more and more strained and unnatural. As the man started to turn around, he saw where his partner was staring. He barked something so sharply that the youngster jumped a half-meter up then scrambled towards his tower. Ranma let out a sigh of relief.

Akane elbowed Ranma a couple more times in the ribs, not wanting him to blurt something out again. Then, she tried carefully to pry the man for information on who these people were and what could be expected of them. She managed to learn two things: firstly, the place was called "valley of the wind". Secondly, the medallion had a really nasty habit of translating only when the gadget felt like it. Seeing that, the man said flatly "ask the head" and refused to talk any more.

A town, or a castle, emerged from beyond a bend in the valley. It stood on a small hill, surrounded by a wall looking identical to the one closing the valley off. There were impressive, ancient looking stone towers growing out of the wall, narrowing towards their tops. These were intermixed with frail-looking watchtowers topped with large platforms. Of the town itself, there was only a heaping of tiled rooftops bulging up in the center visible. Higher up the valley, dots of grazing cattle could be seen on the scarce grasslands of the mountain slopes. Farther than that, shining white peaks reached up, dominating the perspective.

They walked to the gate, which consisted of an archway in the wall, its left side touching one of the stone towers. There was a thin-legged watchtower on the other side of the gate.

Someone from the watchtower called their guide. The girls tensed.

He waved the asker away nonchalantly as he said something brief. The medallion translated "Transporting stray wise woman apprentices to the head". No further questions were asked, there were not even curious faces. They went inside as if that was the way.

Ranma glanced back curious to how the gate looks from inside. She pushed Akane whispering "The wall is against beasts, not men."

The short-haired girl glanced back. True to her husband's word, the wall was, in fact, a fence, its top edge bristling with sharp poles. There was no sign of battlements or walkways along its inner side. The gate turned out to be a row of thick logs, their bottom ends sharpened - like an upturned, hanging palisade, framed by two massive stone abutments. It should be a pain to open, but even a child could manage to close it: drop the wooden part and presto.

Just as they thought, the town from the inside was a sprawl of one- and two-storied buildings separated by narrow, winding streets. It was even relatively clean here, if one turned a blind eye to some overabundance of manure. Walking by some houses, Ranma determined by the scent alone that these were barns. Or did they combine it here, with a barn on the first floor and living quarters on the second?

On the way to their goal known only to the man leading them, their group eventually gathered a crowd of curious children from those who were wandering the streets. Everyone older was, presumably, busy somewhere out of sight. The munchkins kept trying to pull at the dead velociraptor's tail as its carcass was obviously much more interesting than the boring outlander girls. A couple of the most brazen ones already possessed some feathers from the fan at the tip of the tail. Brushing the clamoring children aside, the bearded man led the girls to a particular house. There was a T. rex skull mounted above the door, serving as a marquee.

The man opened the door, gesturing for them to follow him. It wouldn't be so bad inside, with the clean dirt floor, whitewashed walls, and enough light from a huge fireplace and a couple kerosene lamps hanging from the ceiling... But the spirits! The booze breath in the stuffy air was so dense that Akane's eyes bugged out, and she stopped breathing unsure how anyone could breathe _this_. She surely wasn't brave enough.

The center of the spacious room was occupied by a huge, massive table and two rows of burly, smashed drunk men sitting on huge, massive benches to both sides of it. But they were all dwarfed by the person seated at the head of this table. His bald-shaved head glistened a good foot above theirs. His immense muscles were bulging, not covered by his sleeveless fur jacket. With his long, hanging moustache, he was a sight to behold. He was currently emptying a huge tankard that looked tiny in his meaty fist.

The man who brought the outlanders here immediately shrunk two sizes and reported something in a respectful voice. The obnoxious medallion didn't deign to translate.

"That's probably the head he was talking about," Ranma shared her guess in a conspiratorial whisper.

Akane nodded silently, still unsure if it was possible to breathe here.

"Bakhyt!" the head barked at their guide as he thunderously slammed his tankard onto the table. After a three second pause the medallion translated this as "dismissed."

Ranma turned around, but the bearded man wasn't there. He disappeared so silently as if he knew some stealth technique.

The head, meanwhile, stared at the girls with heavy, murky eyes, making Akane ill at ease. The other men present followed his example, but they did it much less impressively.

If Pops was in his place, Ranma thought, assessing him with her trained eye, he'd have half a bottle of sake to go till shutdown. But with this hulk, who knows.

There was a massive, bucket-sized bottle towering in the center of the table, still half-full of something milky.

The head blinked with a massive effort, some thought struggling to surface reflected on his face. Finally, he bellowed: "LAEEDATH!". Ground shook and the flame in the kerosene lamps fluttered.

An annoyed old woman's voice reached from beyond a fur curtain that served as an internal door.

"LAEEDATH!" the boss roared again, slurring. He followed up with a short, unintelligible tirade. Then he slammed his massive tankard against the table signaling to continue with the banquet that had been interrupted so inopportunely. The other men immediately followed his example, but they did it much less impressively.

"There are two error, articulation is not clear enough to see you," the medallion translated.

The aforementioned Laeedath emerged from behind the curtain. She turned out to be a stout granny dressed in a simple woolen dress and a colorful shawl, gray hair showing from under it.

Ranma's and Akane's eyes were immediately drawn to a medallion on her neck. It looked like an exact copy of theirs.

The granny stood looking them over for a few seconds, in some confusion as Ranma felt. Then she gestured the girls to follow her.

There was a storeroom beyond the fur curtain, sturdy shelves sagging under the load of gammons and humongous bottles of moonshine.

"I thought Ami made it?" Ranma whispered.

"It's standard-issue," Akane whispered in return. "Be quiet."

Another fur curtain, and they found themselves in a room where walls were lined with massive chests sealed with paper seals, with lots of dusty scrolls piled on top. There was a simple wooden table in the center, not as massive as the one where the head with his retinue were getting plastered, but still big. There were long benches to the both sides of it and a chair at its head.

Akane noisily inhaled the air smelling of dust and mold, enjoying every bit of it. An ambrosia!

Gesturing the guests to take a bench, Laeedath sighed as she sat on the chair.

Ranma sat down, hiding her suspicion with a titanic effort of will. So the granny is an Ahs-user then? Then she could be more dangerous than Cologne! The redhead was angry at herself that she didn't ask Akane to tell her everything about the medallion.

"Nice to meet you . We—" Akane began but the granny stopped her with a gesture, holding her palm up. She opened her medallion typing something quickly. It beeped. Then Akane's medallion beeped. Worried, Akane opened it but she calmed down seeing "Connection established. Exchanging language information." written on the screen. She turned it to show it to Ranma who was casting worried side glances at their sole Ariadne's thread in this hostile universe.

The medallions beeped synchronously. The granny started talking and her medallion began translating with barely a second of delay: "Welcome to the valley of the wind office. I am Laeedath, the wise woman of this tribe."

"Nice to meet you." Akane bowed. "I'm Tendou Akane, and this," she glanced at the redhead, "Is Saotome Ranma. We're here to save a friend."

The phrase spoken by her medallion felt too short.

"It's obvious you haven't mastered using your interactor, Miss Skywalker," Laeedath noted archly. She was making pauses to let her medallion finish. "Forgetting even to look at your conversation partner."

"That's it!" Ranma blurted out, unable to hold her sudden realization in. "Just as I thought! Look, Akane, it translates someone if you are looking at them!"

Akane's medallion erupted with a long phrase.

"An interactor with double ownership?" Laeedath lifted an eyebrow. "I wasn't aware this is possible. I suspect you'd better talk in turns then, with large pauses in between."

"We have had that experience," Akane admitted sheepishly. "We tried to say we're searching for a girl, but it turned out as a female velociraptor. A total mess."

"So you are searching for a girl," Laeedath stated with some cold in her voice.

"She's a blond who should have appeared here approximately half a day ago," Akane explained in a nervous haste. "She's our comrade, got lost in a... catastrophic space-time rupture."

Ranma wanted to interrupt so strongly she had to bite her tongue. If Laeedath is an Ahs user and that unknown enemy is also an Ahs user, could it happen that the granny is in his vassalage? What if she turns them over?

But the granny, against Ranma's expectations, thawed. "There is such a girl," she said with a barely noticeable smile.

"Is she all right? Unhurt?" Akane exclaimed barely able to wait the end of the translation.

"Where's she?" injected Ranma. "Is she all right, arms and legs still attached?"

Akane's medallion erupted with a long phrase.

"What a mess." Laeedath shook her head. "You girls definitely have to abstain from talking at the same time." She stood up with a groan. "Let's go, I'll lead you to your blond. And yes, she is unhurt."

They went outside through the door of the granny's office on the opposite side from the entrance to the head's half. Some of the children were miling here, so their exit wasn't unnoticed, and soon the entire crowd was again following them down the narrow, winding streets, clamoring and pulling the tail. But the girls were barely aware of this: finally, their goal was close, and they would meet their princess any moment now!

"Here we are," Laeedath said as she stopped before the door of some house turning to the girls. Opening the door she shouted something inside. Her medallion was silent. As well as Akane's because the short haired girls was looking at the open door.

A woman's voice replied something from inside, then muffled "I'm coming, I'm coming" in Japanese could be heard. Ranma and Akane stood practically transfixed... A familiar blond came out...

"Usa... Haruka...?" Akane choked on the prepared greeting. "-san...? But how...? I mean, why?" She looked so flabbergasted that the joyous expression on Haruka's face slowly turned to puzzled.

"Like, glad you're alive, then, like, where's Usagi?" Ranma added no less eloquently as she fought to reel her jaw in.

"Guys?" the racer smiled unsurely. "You devils, you can't help do the impossible!" Her expression quickly turned grim. "Wait. If you were searching for Usagi..."

"Then where is she?" Akane asked a rhetorical question. Her voice was so dismayed, her face so lost, that it would have been funny if it wasn't so sad. Their only lead led them... no, not nowhere. But concerning Usagi, they, it turned out, still had no clue where she was and how she was doing.

(シーンブレイク)

 _Shall you go left, you'll lose your steed. Shall you go right, you'll lose your life. Shall you go straight, you will live, but will lose yourself._

 _A runic stone on a crossroads a questing knight comes to, Russian folk tales._ ·

(シーンブレイク)

"Wait. If you were searching for Usagi..." The tall, boyish-looking girl with short sandy-blond hair turned from Akane to Ranma. "What happened to her?"

"We don't know," Ranma replied. "Now we know that we know nothing. We have been thinking she was misplaced somewhere like the others, but..." Then she added with frustration: "And here we were sure we were coming to rescue her!"

"We need to return as soon as possible, to warn Ami!" Akane said. "I'm sure she'd invent some new way to find her when she learns that this one failed."

"Let's go inside," suggested Laeedath. This was translated by her medallion. Then she addressed someone in the house. As Akane was staring at Haruka, the meaning of these words remained unknown.

A young woman some twenty years old emerged on the threshold. She was dressed in a dark green woolen dress, her shoulder-length chestnut hair hanging loosely. She asked something, addressing Laeedath. "Are those Springday's friends?" Akane's medallion translated.

"Yes, that's them," Haruka replied turning to Laeedath. The latter's medallion translated this. The granny nodded and went inside. The girl in green dress gestured them to come in.

Ranma slightly slapped away a grabby hand of some kid aimed to pluck the last feather out of the tail.

"Springday?" Akane asked in confusion as she walked inside.

"Oh, you don't know it yet?" Haruka turned to her as they walked. "This hellish contraption, for some impish reason translates my name to English. Doing it completely wrong, at that. But trying to explain it to them is futile, they don't know English so 'Springday Skyking' sounds as meaningless to them as 'Ten'o Haruka'.

"Err." Akane remembered Laeedath calling her 'Miss Skywalker'. Could one really trust this translation? She turned to the girl in green, noticing only now that Haruka was wearing an identical woolen dress.

"I'm Tendou Akane, nice to meet you," she offered as she resisted her ingrained reflex to bow, in the last possible moment, as she remembered that she had to look at those she was talking to. A very awkward requirement.

"Ahstat Laeedath," the girl held out a hand for a handshake. Akane reacted with a small delay, proceeding to shake the hand hastily. Then she turned to look at Ranma. Why wasn't she introducing herself? Ranma gestured: 'I'm silent like fish'. Oh. Of course. Akane felt like facepalming. "And this is Saotome Ranma." She pointed at the redhead while keeping eye contact with Ahstat. Definitely, an awkward requirement!

Laeedath — the _elder_ ·Laeedath as they knew now it was a surname, not a name — threw a fur curtain open, gesturing to follow her. The travelers found themselves in a narrow room, its walls lined with wide chests serving also as benches. The granny and the younger Ahstat sat on one side while seating the Japanese girls on the other, so that the groups faced each other. Ranma flopped her backpack onto the bench beside her. Haruka cast a curious side glance at the velociraptor carcass but said nothing.

"I apologize for the lack of proper welcoming," the elder began. "But I suppose, your journey is far from over and time is always precious." She made a pause to let her medallion finish, all the while keeping her eyes on Haruka. "If I understood it right from what Miss Springday had told me, you have been battling an Ahs-Lord. Dare I hope you managed to win?"

"We..." Akane fell silent searching for the right words.

"Allow me." Ranma glanced at her wife, receiving a nod of agreement. She continued: "You can't call that a victory. Space-time shattered, scattering us all around. Luckily, everyone survived and we managed to get all of them back. Except Usagi. The enemy... I could only assume he was also thrown somewhere far away. Because he didn't show again. Well, either that, or he found something more interesting to do.

"Something more interesting to do?" Haruka turned to her leaning forward to look at her around Akane who sat in the middle. "So he wasn't attacking seriously? As you are wording it, one could think it was just a game for him." She hesitated for a moment, then continued a bit sheepishly: "Well, he did knock me out with one strike, but then again, rushing him was an extremely stupid thing to do... Nothing to be proud of.

"With the same strike," Ranma replied grimly, "he also smashed a mountain range. While we couldn't even scratch him. Not me, nor Saturn. He was just annulling any magic. Ki too."

"A mountain range?" Haruka asked in disbelief.

"Yeah, just like that, off-hand. After that we fought him, to no avail. It was worse than with that demon. So Usagi decided to use... You know what. Then everything went kaboom, knocking us all out. When we came to, there were only three of us. Me, Akane 'n Ami, hell knows where, with pterodactyls flying around. It was Ami who saved us. She had found the other girls and she had found the way back to Earth. Usagi was the only mistake, we have been thinking this would be our last trip to get everyone accounted for.

"Your last?" Haruka asked, surprised. "What about me?"

"Everyone thought you had died," Ranma explained with blunt directness, to Akane's horror. "Well, I tried to change their mind, told them that until they saw the body with their own... gack!"

"We are so glad that you are alive and well!" Akane injected hastily as she extracted her elbow from the doubled up Ranma's side.

"Thought I had died?" Haruka repeated with worry in her voice. "Then Michiru and Hotaru... Guys, please don't take this as ingratitude, but I have to return to them as soon as possible! How soon could we go?"

"I am very sorry," Akane said quickly, all the while glaring at Ranma. "But the way back could take days. But don't worry for them, they are all right! You are the last one who—"

"Save for Usagi," Ranma reminded her.

"Save for Usagi," Akane agreed, losing all her optimism.

A long, heavy silence ensued.

The elder Laeedath was looking at the travelers, clearly weighing something in her mind. Finally she spoke, there was some some unrecognizable, mixed emotion permeating her voice: "Scarlet, Anarchy, girls, I have a proposition for you." She made a long pause. Her medallion finished translating, but still she remained silent.

"What sort of proposition?" Akane asked with wary hope.

"And what would we have to do in return?" Ranma added when Akane's medallion finished. She simply twisted away from the Megaton Elbow Jab as she foresaw one coming.

"Nothing too hard," the granny replied ignoring their antics. "Just find, if possible, the fate of my daughter. And, if there would be anything left to, bury it with dignity—"

"Grandmother!" Ahstat exclaimed in outrage. "Are you seriously trying to offer them error, sea-green legend, error, that killed Mom? It's just an error, articulation is not clear enough!"

Akane felt utterly weirded out until she realized that her medallion failed to convey the young woman's increasingly heated tirade. When Ahstat started screaming it fell completely silent.

The elder waited patiently for Ahstat to run out of steam. Then she started counting up: "First, they have already clashed with Ahs Lords, making them enemies of one. It won't get any worse if they try. Second, their friend was teleported who knows where. You know how hard it is to find someone even knowing the world ID. Third, they can fend for themselves. Take, for example, that velociraptor. How did you obtain it?"

"A pack jumped us," Akane explained. "We had to fight back. Well, we killed one by accident."

"By accident. Tell me, my dear, what you fought back with? I don't see any weapons on you."

"Well, with our arms," Akane didn't get it. "With our legs..."

Ahstat boggled.

"Told you so," the old woman said in a lecturing tone.

"That's right," Haruka added, "They are that awesome. They'd beat a tyrannosaur with their bare hands, not just some velociraptors!"

"Don't remind me," Ranma grumbled. "I've never met a critter as pestilent before."

"Are you serious?" Haruka asked in bewilderment. "I was just joking!"

"We had to be serious, it was sticking to us us like a burr. Trampled our entire food supply to dust before we chased him off! So we have to improvise now." She lifted the velociraptor carcass by the tail.

Everyone was distracted by the creaking of Ahstat's jaw dropping low. The young woman sat there, her mouth opened and her eyes bugged out. Then she came to her senses, reeling her jaw in sheepishly. She asked, dumbfounded: "How could it be possible?"

"Training," Ranma replied smugly.

"About your proposition, granny?" Akane returned the conversation back to the track.

The old woman sat silent for a while, collecting her thoughts — or, maybe, reminiscing. When she finally spoke, her voice was dull, devoid of that vitality that made her look younger. "Twenty years ago... All interactors — _all_ ·interactors in all worlds, if the traveling merchants could be believed — received a message. It was short but it made a lot of waves... and trouble." She closed her eyes, remembering, then quoted: "Due to increasing inflow of requests for audience, often concerning insignificant matters not worthy of my attention, which led to the waiting list growing to the size that makes the waiting impractically long, as well due to superfluous number of messages addressing me, I decree: Firstly, all calls and messages directed at me are blocked for users of all levels. The exceptions to this rule are set by me personally. The list of these exceptions has access level zero. Secondly, any user of any level could summon me if they collect the tokens that I had randomly distributed across the worlds. For details see the article 'emergency summoning tokens'. Thirdly, all safe information about me is contained in the article 'Ahs-Asch'. It is strongly recommended to avoid trying to learn more, lest you be spontaneously erased, as a significant share of information concerning me has access level zero. From: Ahs-Asch, level zero."

Laeedath fell silent, her medallion continuing translating for a while.

"Wait!" Haruka exclaimed, barely having patience to wait for it to finish. "You told me the highest level Ahs-lords could have is one!"

The old woman kept her silence, her granddaughter replying instead. Akane's medallion translated: "That's nothing more than a legend! A trap made by someone of the high-level ones to cull the most indocile test subjects! If mom hadn't believed it she'd be still alive!"

"Wait," Ranma injected. "A spontaneous erasing of those who learns too much? Does that mean your memory would be erased? What is level zero?"

"None the less," the old Laeedath said, "The article titled 'Ahs-Asch' exists. And requires level zero to edit it." She displayed the tiny screen of her medallion. "I know, granddaughter, I know. No one of us had ever met anyone who'd know an Ahs-Lord level two or higher, even third-hand. We don't know if this article is true or if the Lords of levels two and one are able to fool the interactor belonging to a wise woman of a feeble sixth level. We don't even know if level one exists or there's no one higher than two. But still..."

"Ahs-Asch," Akane read from her medallion, "is the one and only level zero user, who cares for all dvellers of Ahs with untiring attention, under whose wise and skillful leadership nations and planets march toward the better, brighter future in the name of Greater Good and Justice?" She lifted her eyes from the screen, her voice full of doubt. "Sounds like a propaganda."

"But the style reminds of what granny had quoted for us," Ranma noted. "Everything's one big mess without breaks. Unless that's just a glitch of translation."

"No," the elder Laeedath affirmed. "It isn't. In the Ahs language it looks the same, an unordered heap. Come on, read further."

"Right..." Akane stared at the screen. "Toward the better, brighter future in the name of greater good and justice. Quote limit does not exist. Geas do not exist." She lifted her gaze, full of incomprehension. "What does this mean?"

"Every Ahs-Lord," Ahstat explained repeating it like a text learned by rote, "has a limit to their abilities, however powerful they are. Every Ahs-Lord has geas. If they break these, it leads to their quota being cut down, on even them being demoted a level."

"While the zeroth one," her grandmother continued in her stead, "Seems to be devoid of both. Simply speaking, this article says: 'I'm omnipotent'. This is more like a God than a Lord. Infinite energy, infinite abilities, and none of the Lords could stay against him, as they all are below him in level."

"In short, too god to be true," Ahstat finished acidly. "But very fitting for a fairy tale for overly trusting people."

"We shouldn't discard that possibility either," the elder agreed. "Anyway, my daughter... She had found a way to find the coordinates of the closest token. She wanted to summon this Ahs-Asch and ask him a couple of questions. Just a couple of questions. To learn the truth, to lift our eternal existential curse—"

"But she found only death," Ahstat interrupted her in an uncompromising voice. This was translated by Akane's medallion, not the old woman's. Three voices overlapped making the Tendou heir feel like her head was going to explode.

"Don't interrupt me," the grandmother chided the granddaughter. "She had found the token and was returning with it when death caught up with her."

"What happened?" Ranma asked quietly, politely but insistently.

"That's what you have to find out," the elder Laeedath said. "If you agree, of course. I've received this message from her: 'I did it! Kisses. Returning soon'. It came from inside our world. Four hours later I've received: 'Your level seven proxy user's life activity ceased. Enter the reset code into the proxy's interactor. Coordinates such and such'. And that was it."

"So she was killed because of the token?" Ranma inquired.

"Or she was killed by the environment," the elder replied. "This planet is largely hostile toward humans but the zone around the transport node is known for its especially dire fauna. It's much worse than anything you could encounter in the jungle at the base of our mountains. And the coordinates point inside that zone. That place is just a couple kilometers away from the node, so it won't be easy to get there. And very dangerous. But there's a hope for you: if all of that wasn't a trap, the token should be still here."

"Twenty years later?" Ranma had hard time believing.

"Read the article 'emergency summoning tokens'. One of its points states: Each time Ahs-Asch is summoned, the tokens are scattered randomly across different worlds, while all users receive a notification... Well, there was not a single notification since then. Which means that either this scheme is a trap, or—"

"Or someone took the token to themselves," Ahstat injected, straining Akane's brain again as the young woman and both medallions were talking simultaneously. "Do recall that owning a token gives some mysterious 'bonuses' making search for the rest of them easier."

"Stop interrupting me!" snapped the old woman. "Don't you see Miss Scarlet is cross-eyed already!" Then she continued in an even voice: "And try to recall that token could stay in one's hands no more than forty days, after which it will be teleported to a random point of a random world. Hence, either it's still there, or it had been carried away long ago, out of our reach."

"So there's a chance we could collect these tokens?" Ranma asked. "And summon that omnipotent zeroth one? What help would he be to us?"

"Yes, there's a chance," the granny said, becoming kind and caring again. "Concerning his use to you... If we extrapolate the abilities of Ahs Lords, he'd be also omniscient. It would be easy for him to find what happened to your friend and where she is."

"All right!" Ranma agreed instantly. "But we can't promise we will go for that token. If Ami finds a shorter way..."

"I understand." The old woman sighed. "But I still hope. Maybe there would be no better chance for me. It's too dangerous there. Don't you dare dying on me, is that clear?"

"Don't worry," Ranma smirked arrogantly. "No some beasts could best me 'n Akane. We've fought things much more dangerous."

"I'll go bring the clothing," Ahstat said as she jumped to her feet. Her voice wavered under the onslaught of contradicting emotions. "It should have dried by now." She departed the room hastily.

"Pity I couldn't keep this secret from my granddaughter." Laeedath let out a heavy sigh. "I'm afraid it reopens her old wounds..."

"Do you have your henshin pen with you?" Akane whispered addressing Haruka. "Tie it on a sturdy cord and put it on your neck. Our travel could get rough.

"Already done," the tall blond grinned lopsidedly as she pulled a few centimeters of rope from under her collar.

"Please tell me, granny," Ranma asked with uncharacteristic tact, "your daughter, she... What were her combat abilities? I'm dearly sorry but it's vital for us to know." She bowed.

"Mmm... I see, you take this seriously. Very well. My daughter possessed two talents that allowed her to brave the dinosaur infested forests. Unlike such a stay-at-homer as me. Firstly, the ability to notice them before they notice her. A combination of tracking and a skill to work the interactor scanners. She was peerless in that area." The old woman sighed. "And secondly, mastery of all kinds of guns. A sniper shotgun, a boomstick, a revolver, a concealed revolver in her boot — she never traveled with less than that."(note 1)

"Uh-huh." Ranma frowned. "Then it should have been something uncommon, hard to detect, or just a pack big enough that she ran out of ammo."

"Ranma!" Akane hissed fiercely.

"No, Miss Anarchy is right," Laeedath stopped her. "You have to think of all possibilities, this is important for your survival... The problem is, I have nothing to share. I'm not a woman of action, so I have little actual idea about my daughter's craft. She could have erred. She could have met an insurmountable set of circumstances. Or she was simply so hurried in her joy that she became careless. I had been thinking this over for years, but alas. You would have to rely upon your own judgment and skills."

Ahstat returned with an armful of clothing. Ranma left the room hastily, grabbing her backpack from the bench. Then she stood outside, leaning against the wall next to the fur curtain.

"I didn't think she is that shy," a medallion's voice reached her, muffled by the curtain. But who had said that, the grandmother or the granddaughter, remained unknown.

Soon the four of them emerged from behind the curtain. Haruka was dressed in an elegant pants suit. All five of them went outside. The crowd of children hadn't dissipated: it seems there were no other pastimes available for them.

"I wish you good luck," Ahstat said loudly, and bit her lip. Her eyes were glistening conspicuously. "So long!" She slammed the squeaky wooden door shut leaving the three Japanese girls alone with the old woman. And the whispering children. The raptor's tail lost what remained of its plume.

Laeedath led the girls through the maze of winding streets, moving pretty swiftly. Very soon they found themselves at the town gate. Here they had to stop while the old woman sorted the younger generation: it seemed, the most little ones were barred from leaving the town. The process was accompanied with much clamor. One of the bearded men manning the watchtower was called down to help. Finally, some of the children were filtered out, the rest allowed to go outside under a sworn oath to keep close to Laeedath, with disobedience to be met with a terrible punishment. At least, Akane interpreted it so: her medallion choked in the first seconds of ruckus, and from that point on kept spewing pearls like "pink-turpentine idiosyncrasy" or "hypertensor spanking".

Even while trying to be good boys and girls the children posed so much a burden that there was no chance to talk until they reached the outer wall. Ranma, having a weak spot for kids, finally gave up, handing the velociraptor carcass to the munchkins. She justified this saying "If that zone is really swarming with these, we'll have a lot more chances to catch us a dinner."

But there was the wall, at last. The familiar man climbed down from his watchtower, grumbling in discontent. He began lifting the ladder again.

"Wait, I'll get the second one for you", he grumbled.

"Thanks, but no need," Ranma stopped him. "We'll just jump down."

Meanwhile, a familiar youngster wandered in from the second watchtower. Seeing Laeedath standing next to Ranma, he didn't dare to stare at her. He started bullying the kids instead. He had almost succeeded in taking the velociraptor carcass from them when the wise woman suddenly turned around, laying into him. Ranma had the pleasure of witnessing a new record being set in rapid paling. Whatever the old woman said to him — quiet but heartfelt — the wannabe bully released this trophy and made himself scarce much quicker than that time when the man barked at him.

"Well, we're going," Ranma said, then all but flew up the ladder. "Akane, you'll be getting Haruka down." She jumped down at the other side of the wall.

"Many thanks you for your invaluable help, granny." Akane bowed, then hurried up the ladder.

Haruka started climbing up next. "Laeedath-san," she asked over her shoulder. "What are _your_ ·geas?"

"To prevent development of the internal combustion engine," the old woman replied without delay.

"I see." Haruka became grim. "Good luck to you. I don't think I'd have a heart to... like this..."

But she was high up at this point, and the wind was noisy. The old woman's medallion stayed silent.

"By the way!" Ranma called them from below, suddenly agitated. "Do we have these geass? And if we do, then what are these? I don't want to be stuck forever hell knows where because of breaking some rule I didn't know about."

"Right away!" Spooked, Akane started digging in the medallion frantically. Losing her balance, she barely avoided impaling herself on the sharpened poles the top of the wall was bristling with. Then she slammed the lid shut with a sigh of relief. "To prevent development of traveling between worlds that bypass using the transport network. This is hard to break even if we'd wanted to."

"So if we find someone who's inventing their own kind of portals between worlds, then we have to stop him?" Ranma inquired. "Yeah, that's unlikely."

"Excuse me..." Akane scooped Haruka up — not the easiest task considering that the other girl was taller. Easily jumping down from the six-meter wall she put the blond on her feet.

"As I understand, we'd be going to some sort of a portal?" Haruka asked.

"Yes," Ranma replied. "It's not far from here, at the foot of these mountains, up a tree." Then she added in an impish voice: "Right above the swamp into which someone had dumped us."

Akane cringed but didn't deign the barb with a reply. She turned to the rescued girl instead: "Haruka-san, Laeedath-baasan said you'll tell us how to use the medallion... And what in the world is Ahs?"

"How to use...?" Haruka grew puzzled. "Well, as far as I remember, she said everything in it is simple and obvious. But you have to learn on your own: the interactor just won't accept commands from anyone but its owner, it uses DNA recognition."

"Like that," Akane drawled with disappointment. It surely did not feel 'easy' nor 'obvious' to her.

"Well, it also has an encyclopedia," Haruka added. "But most of its articles, it seems, are written by users or Lords. There's no guarantee of accuracy. On top of that, transmitting articles from world to world isn't free. Generally, a world has as many of them available as users manage to bring on their interactors. Except the rare system articles. If you want to learn more, then pay with your quota.

"But what is Ahs?" Ranma returned the conversation onto the tracks.

"No one knows," Haruka shocked them. "There's an unknown number of worlds. All of the ones known to the old hag are variations of planet Earth. There are transport nodes in these worlds. There also are users and lords — who, I suspect are users too, just more high ranked. And then there's the system that stands over it all.

"Where do the users come from?"

"They say, the system from time to time chooses people on its own, using principles only it knows." Haruka shruged. "If that is true or not, you have to ask them yourself. Ahs-users aren't the most open and talkative people. Laeedath and the other wise women like her somehow pass this status on their children. She wasn't especially forthcoming in this regard. She only said that such order, if judge by indirect indicators, holds for centuries."

"And no one, in all that time, did make an effort to learn the truth?" Ranma was bewildered.

"Maybe." Haruka's expression became far from sunny. "If you remember the words about 'spontaneous erasing' of those who learns too much..."

"Erasing? Their memories?" Ranma asked this for the second time.

"I doubt," Haruka said. "I would sooner believe in erasing people from reality so that there's no trace is left of them."

Ranma and Akane started. They have been sure, up to recent time, that that was exactly what had happened to Haruka. Could Usagi really...?

"A nice place, in short," Haruka continued. "The old woman herself is inclined towards the theory of this all being some sort of grandiose experiment. Random omnipotent beings produced a set of copies of Earth and began walking up and down their inhabitant's spines ... The dinosaurs couldn't have possibly risen from fossils all by themselves. All the more so that the shapes of the continents everywhere match to our era, not Jurassic.

"So, the Ahs-Lords are these experimenters?" Akane asked.

"Who knows. Maybe they are. Maybe they are the same guinea pigs, just fatter. Maybe that zero one is the experimenter. Or just the most prominent guinea pig. There's no body to tell you. From all appearances, overly curious people don't live long here."

"Like the daughter of Laeedath-san!" Akane exclaimed, stopping in her tracks from this frightening realization. "Could we get in—"

"Let's talk to Ami first, all right?" the redhead interrupted her. "If we keep wild guessing like that we'd tie ourselves into— Watch out!" She pushed Haruka aside, at the same time knocking an orange blur away. Attacks started coming from all sides, swift and coordinated, three or four creatures at once. Ranma was twisting and ducking pushed to the limit, unable to counterattack as she had to keep flailing the tall blond around like a ragdoll, all too aware of how breakable the other girl was.

A second later the velociraptors were swept away by the whirlwind named Akane. This time many of them failed to retreat, her strikes were swift and merciless.

Two seconds of mad dodging, then it was over. Only Akane stood in a combat stance, glancing around warily, and the orange carcasses kept twitching, not having realized yet they were dead.

"Ugh... I don't feel... too well." Haruka stumbled and sank down onto to her knees. She held her palms against the ground that kept swaying wildly, making her stomach churn.

"Don't worry," Akane reassured, her voice wavering. "I'll carry you." She shrugged her backpack off, handing it to Ranma who noticed how pale her wife was. "Don't be alarmed, you are all right. Unhurt."

There was a gaping rip in the shoulder of the blond's jacket. Despite all their efforts! And that was not too large a pack. Ranma noted to herself grimly that their ability to protect a non-combatant from a swarm of small things leaved much to desire. Very much. Granted, Akane's basic Senshi technique, "Iridescent Aurora", was tailored for such a case. But barring that, they had nothing of comparable use in the Anything-Goes arsenal. Ranma recalled the damage she, Ryouga and Mousse received on Mount Horai from a pack of monkeys who went ape-shit on them.(note 2) Of course the hairy things then had their behinds handed to them, and were promptly punted away. But they still managed to inflict a fair share of scrapes. What if it had been something poisonous? What if the claw that ripped through Haruka's jacket reached a centimeter further?

She had to invent some technique for such a case. Firing a ki-blast at the ground under her feet, to make a shock-wave? She had to think on that.

"So that's how they are, the dinosaurs." Haruka glanced at the orange, black-striped carcasses sporting huge wicked claws. She wasn't clutching at the ground anymore, but still wasn't in a hurry to get up. "If the small ones are like that, I don't even want to think what these giants who are paraded in the museums are capable of."

"Even nastier", Ranma grumbled as she kept listening intently. The bushes rustling in the wind were effectively masking any sounds. "Let's go already?"

Akane helped Haruka to rise up and climb onto her back. Then they sped through the sparse forest with huge leaps. Entering the jungle, they continued by tree-tops, shinobi style. In a blink of an eye they were back at the small bog.

"Here's the swamp where we landed," Ranma commented as she gestured around the said bog.

"Alarm!" the medallion added its voice. "Detecting a multitude of sanguivorous life forms in the air! Deterring system power is insufficient!"

"And mosquitoes are still here," the redhead added. "Let's hurry up, so far no other beast had crawled in on us."

"I feel some sort of deja vu," Akane mumbled as she let Haruka down. "Aha, here's that tree."

"Danger!" the medallion howled, "Detecting a large carnivorous life form!"

The underbrush crunched, and there was suddenly a gap-toothed maw looming over the girls. The left eye was glowing with vengeful hatred. The right one was swollen shut.

Haruka backed away, risking to fall into the bog.

"You again?！" Ranma saw red. "How long will you keep pestering us?！"

The T. rex roared, blowing the hair of the girls back. Haruka plopped onto her posterior.

"Take this, you crum!" Ranma roared in return. "Shishiii... Hokouuu... DAN‼"

"Raitsui Dan!" Akane echoed.

Two ki-blasts fired point-blank slammed into the target, and the dinosaur was simply swept away. Legs flicked up for a moment, then tail, then there were only the disturbed bushes swaying as some broken tree was failing slowly and creakily.

"I can't help notice that your 'shishi hokou dan's are becoming really powerful," Akane noted with concern. "That was close to the ultimate form!"(note 2)

"It's just that he really pissed me off!" Ranma growled, tearing a giant leech from Haruka's pant leg and throwing it into the bog with such a force that the hapless sanguinivore overflew its habitat, wrapping itself around a tree branch on the other side of it. "With assholes like him any fool could master the ultimate form. Let's climb already while he haven't crawled back out. Ahs-seven Tkhachshchas Eet Suht, open the portal."

The portal appeared amidst the broken tree branches with a sharp click. The martial artists climbed to it quickly, lifting Haruka in their arms. Finding herself in the kaleidoscopic hall she started looking around. "Impressive, but his hall of mirrors makes my head swim. How could you stay here without losing your orientation? It's like its creator wasn't human or just wasn't thinking about comfort of those using it..."

"It's all a part of Ahs," Ranma explained with disdain. "Who could have thought you can gain useful abilities by getting stuffed into a digestive... Blarg. But without these abilities we'd be unable to save anyone."

"Meanwhile, Akane was tapping the keys hastily. "There are two possible routes. One is a haul shorter but we'd have to go through—"

"Wait," Ranma interrupted her. "Please check if we can open the portal directly to back home. We can sacrifice my quota if we have to. These tokens could be our only chance, while traveling back and forth sparingly could take several days."

"But we have agreed that your quota is our emergency supply! Our last resort."

"This is an emergency right now. We have to bring Haruka home, either way. We have to figure out where we need to go, we can't do that without Ami. So, we have to open a portal home. From this place, if possible. If not, then from the closest possible point along our route towards home."

You are right," Akane gave up. She started tapping the keys, the medallion beeped several times. "Done, targeting completed. But it will take seventy percent of your quota to open, then eighty per minute while the portal is open." She handed the medallion to the redhead.

"Bugger." Ranma scowled. "Anyway, Ami is not that bad a runner. I hope we'd have enough to put her back."

"Back?" Akane asked.

"Of course!" Ranma was genuinely surprised. "As we go into that breeding ground to get the token — how long, do you think, she'd live if she comes with us?"

"So I noticed," Haruka injected, rubbing her shoulder through the tear in the sleeve. "If this area is considered mild, then you guys will need everything you have just to stay alive in that place."

"Agreed! You only have to step through, we'll call Ami all together." Akane turned to Ranma. "Are you ready?"

"Here we go." The redhead pushed the button. The mechanical voice started droning, listing various safety conditions by numbers that weren't telling the girls anything. Then the portal had closed, and they were submerged in darkness. A moment later it was replaced with the dull light of polar day.

Haruka stepped outside and shivered from the frosty wind. "Mercury, where are you!" she shouted.

"Hey, Ami!" Ranma yelled, poking her head out of the portal to search for a lone figure in a short skirt. To her surprise, she found several such figures. Weren't they going to teleport to Tokyo, or what?

"Mercury!" Akane barked, leaning from the other side. "Run here! Quick!"

"Go-go-go!" Ranma added. "Move it!"

Separating from the others, Mercury ran towards the portal. Detransforming on the run, she lost speed stumbling in her home shoes.

"Hurry!" Ranma and Akane chorused, urging her.

"Haruka-san...?" The blue-haired girl stopped frozen in her tracks.

Ranma grabbed her by the shoulder, jerking the shocked girl inside.

"But they told me everyone except you should already be—" Haruka had time to say with surprise. Then the portal closed, cutting her off and leaving the three of them in the darkness.

"There are thirty eight percent left," Akane concluded with a sigh, her face lit with the green glow of the screen.

"You see, we have some unforeseen complications here," Ranma explained to the shell-shocked Ami.

(シーンブレイク)

Ami was feeling both relief and frustration. Relief because her worst fear did not become reality. Ranma and Akane were alive and well, which meant they did not meet any khas-eeschaeets. Ami had been torturing herself with guilt for making decision for them, as she withheld information that could have been vital. That was a thing of the past now. But an another weight came to replace the one she had shed. The task at hand had no solution! None at all! If she had more knowledge, more experience in this new, completely unfamiliar area, where she had to move like blinded with a dense fog! But she had neither. Her worst nightmare found a way into reality. She was letting them down! In a vital matter this time!

"I can't. There's just no way," she said, not meeting their eyes. "I am so sorry. This entire system seems to be built around the rights limitations, while our access level is the lowest there is." The girl genius closed the medallion with a sigh, to hand it to Akane.

"Could you at least tell us what this Ahs thing really is?" Ranma asked with poorly hidden frustration in her voice as she continued to wave mosquitoes away from the girl genius with a branch. They had tried to sit in the hall at first, cut off from the outside world in the darkness. But it had quickly grew intolerably hot. So they moved onto the tree top, opening the portal at the old coordinates. The three of them had been sitting there since, one working, two keeping the tide of bloodsuckers away from her. No one wanted to waste even a little time... But, as it was turning out, their efforts were in vain. Ami felt an another pang of guilt.

"I'm sorry." She hung her head. "All information, it's filtered so much that there aren't even speculations concerning the topics I need."

"Rrranma!" The redhead's spouse hit her upside the head so good that a big lump emerged on her head, her eyes tearing up. "How could you be such a insensitive jerk! Honestly! Ami-chan, forgive us, I know you did everything you could!"

"Shutting up already," Ranma hissed as she felt for her lump gingerly. "Let's carry her to the old woman, will we? She'd be safe there while we run for the token."

"No, no, there's no need!" Ami injected hastily. "I can sit here, I'll be fine. It's far enough from the ground and—"

A low, rolling growl reached from the forest below. A huge head, with one eye swollen shut and most of its teeth broken, emerged from the undergrowth. Then it started moving, parting bushes and dipping periodically as its owner sported a noticeable limp. Which wasn't preventing him from glaring at the girls with one eye and growling menacingly, promising he'll pay them back, just you wait.

Ami startled, her eyes growing wide. The T. rex, even beaten up as he was, posed an impressive sight.

Ranma made a threatening move. The dinosaur immediately made himself scarce, retreating back into the undergrowth. His roar rolled around, misleading indirect as if it was coming from everywhere at once.

"Yeah, we'll leave you sitting here, he'll crawl back out, even though his ass is kicked, and drop your tree into the swamp. The eighty eight leeches there will make a short work of gnawing you through to the bone."

"Rrranma!" Akane raised her arm, and the redhead cringed. "I'm tired already of beating sense into you, honestly!"

"I didn't say anything wrong," the other girl defended unrepentantly. "The leeches there are really thick as my leg, their teeth like beaver's, you have had held one yourself. And there are really more than eighty of 'em."

Akane just sighed, frustrated: how could he not understand such simple things?

(シーンブレイク)

"Are you sure you don't need a weapon?" asked Ahstat. The martial artists were busy packing one lean backpack for a short trip, having chosen Akane's for its lack of holes. "A knife at least?" The young woman was convinced that her grandmother was sending the girls to their certain doom. So she was fretting as best as she could.

"A knife?" Ranma rummaged in the backpack, and produced a large hunting knife. "We do have one. I just couldn't think of any use of it as a weapon." She pulled the knife out of its sheath, tested its sharpness with her thumb and slid it back in, tying the strap. "Against any opponent I could think of, it would be less useful than my bare hands. A cut is more lethal, but it won't stop the attacker right away, like a punch does. Instead of a knocked out opponent, or at least a staggered one, you get someone wounded lethally but dangerous twice as much. Them bleeding out won't happen right away. While our vital goal is to avoid getting wounded. We don't have to kill our opponents dead. It would be more expedient to knock 'em out or cripple them, then run away, if avoiding the fight is possible. Not to mention that a hand occupied with a knife becomes useless for grappling, climbing and so on. It's awfully inflexible. No, a knife in hand lowers our defense considerably."

"What about slashing at their throats?" Akane suggested with a uncharacteristic blood-thirstiness. Looking at the knife made her remember various dinosaurs. Where did Ranma get it from? She had been sure they didn't have one.

"Where I can reach their throat I'd rather punch them, to knock them out right away," the redhead replied in a lecturing voice. "Any animal, and a man too, could still strike one more time when their throat is cut. Never forget this. Well, and I've said it already what our main goal is."

"So, any weapon is worse than useless for you?" Ami asked, her interest piqued. Knowing the details was important from the tactical point of view, bu she hadn't have a good question them on this particular topic. They have been fighting things a magical girl is purposed to fight, their powers infinitely more efficient again demons than any weapon.

"Not entirely true." Ranma scratched the back of her head. "A quarterstaff would be very useful. On the other hand, the hassle of carrying it... Anyway, where would we get a good, sturdy quarterstaff here? No, it's better to not have one that it breaking at the wrong time. We'll have to improvise. Using broken off branches if we need to fight snakes, and the like. But this," she demonstrated the knife. "This is a tool." She put the knife away in Akane's backpack. (note 3)

(シーンブレイク)

They ran the route from the valley to the portal tree quickly, it was learned by rote now. Akane had raised a question of bringing the exit point closer to the village, but Ami scrapped that idea right away, explaining that there was a margin of error on a scale of several kilometers while aiming from an another world. There was no guarantee their next attempt would bear a better result. After all, the last time they were aiming properly, it at a point inside the settlement. And their quota was too finite to allow playing such a lottery.

Akane was now casting promising glares at the redhead, contemplating of a better payback for all the accusations of crook-handedness.

They didn't have to shoo the tyrannosaurus this time: he was lurking in the dense underbush revealing himself only with vengeful growls.

Akane stood fumbling with the medallion, and swearing under her breath. Ranma listened in, having nothing better to do. She noted absently that her spouse's vocabulary was much richer than the former wannabe yamato nadeshiko wanted everyone to believe.

Finally the portal opened, revealing savannah lit by the reddish-orange evening sun.

"It's fifty two kilometers." Akane pointed with her arm as she stepped through the opening. "What do you think, would we make it in one hour?" She was exuding a desire to dash towards the horizon.

It was too long since we were running seriously, Ranma thought as she remembered Akane's old morning jogs around the block where the doujou stood. Even then, being barely trained, her speed was impressive. Now, when her true speed was long awakened, that measly distance wouldn't satisfy her. Ranma felt a pang of guilt as she remembered how constricting was Tokyo for Akane, especially Juuban. But when training in the wild, they were so focused on beating each other that they never had time, nor energy left for running marathon distances.

The desert race didn't count at all, that was more a torture session of endurance training than anything.

"You don't have to ask." The redhead smirked. "Let's race." Then her face turned serious. "Just let's not miss the edge of that Bermutsa trapezoid where people go missing."

"Well, the beasts there simply won't be able to gain on us, however dire they may be," Akane noted, digging in the medallion with impatience. "Probably... Here, I marked it. Don't worry, it's at the very end, some ten kilometers around the node."

"A cheetah could," Ranma reminded her. "Though without ki, it wouldn't last long. Anyway, don't get overconfident... No, that's not what worries me. I don't believe the beasts are the cause. The locals, those who travel around, they are hardy people. It's not that simple. They call on the beasts to _explain_ ·the disappearances, but what if it's something else...? All right, let's run, we'll get to the bottom of it there," she finished seeing Akane dance in place, practically vibrating.

They flew across the hard, dry land covered with tufts of rough, whitered grass. It was really running, not huge leaps, this time. It's good to move in leaps when you need to show off, or when you move through rough country. Granted, leaping is faster, but it tires you much more with each kilometer passed: on the speeds like that, air resistance becomes the most prominent energy absorber. You have to either put more energy into your legs, or to decrease that resistance using ki. Which, in turn, requires concentration, exertion of your willpower, and energy again. Running is much more efficient, pity that not every terrain is suitable for it, Ranma mused as she tried her best to not fall behind. Why don't they have a bicycle with them.(note 4)

Akane chose a break-neck pace at first, so that Ranma barely kept up with her, worrying she'd tire herself out. But Akane came to her senses a few kilometers later, slowing down to manageable speeds. Now they could run for hours... if they had a healthy meal afterwards. Preferably, consisting of a bigger dinosaur.

Sun was shining from their back and right, crawling slowly towards the horizon. The light, still bright, was starting to gain orange tones. The heat, though, wasn't receding at all. Half a hour later Ranma grew all sweaty and thirsty. She reached for Akane's backpack to take the canteen. But the other girl felt like taunting her, and decided to play tag. As a result, they reached the edge of the danger zone in forty minutes instead of the planned hour. The number of dinosaurs carnivorous, herbivorous and who-knows-I-was-running-too-fast-to-get-a-look that she scared up, riled or even pulled at their tails, counted in dozens. Despite this semi-desert land being scarcely populated!

"Stop! Stop, I say!" Ranma was yelling after her. The redhead had to perform an obstacle race, jumping over and dodging those dinosaurs who chose to keep swallowing dust in their attempts to get back at Akane. The scaly ones, however, were tiring quickly and giving up. Except that one ten-ton triceratops, its bone collar covered with scars. Taking a great offense at Akane flipping it on the tip of its beak, it continued to chase her until it fell from exhaustion. Ranma hoped dearly that the immense beast will not die from exhaustion like a horse ridden to death. "Stop, will you‼！"

A black triangle of the sharp-pointed pyramid emerged on the horizon. Noticing it, Akane came to her senses and skid to a halt, raising clouds of dust. Breathing heavily, she opened the medallion in a hurry. Ranma caught up with her, heaving as well, and slapped her upside the head lightly: "Who should watch the environment for you!"

Both were soaked with sweat and disheveled, but Ranma also was the color of the local soil, except her eyes. Making a disgusted exclamation, she started patting herself down.

"We are almost upon our destination," Akane noted with embarrassment as she displayed the medallion screen.

"Yeah," Ranma grumbled, smearing the grime that was covering her face. "After kicking dust across this supposedly deadly zone for several kilometers!" She pointed at the faraway pyramid. "Who should have watched for the border? That thing shouldn't be visible from the spot where we should have slowed down and doubled our caution!"

"Well," Akane wasn't about to give up. "The direct check of the beasts showed that they aren't any more dangerous here than I other places."

"Hmm..." Ranma grew thoughtful. " _For us_ , surely. But take the recent triceratops. I haven't seen anything like it before. For someone who couldn't run really fast he'd be a deadly terror, a juggernaut of doom. I suspect any bullets would just ping off that bone mask... All right, let's hope they're simply bigger here. And that the one that devoured um... how is her name, the daughter of the old woman Laeedath, hadn't chewed the token to pieces.

Akane noted the direction. They ran again, slower this time, watching their sides, ready to dash any moment. Sun was quite close to the horizon now, the world turning orange and the shadows, that were stretching to their front-left, growing long and deep.

They haven't meet any dinosaurs, until — that rotten luck again — they reached their destination. There was a large pack of man-sized predators, something in-between the tiny swift velociraptor and the ponderous T. rex. Covered with reddish-brown scales, with no feathers in sight, the things started encircling the girls, while making a riot of shrill squawks. The teeth in the maws opened menacingly were small but sharp.

"Here we go again," Akane growled, taking a ready stance as she cast a dirty glare at the dinosaurs.

"Wait." Ranma narrowed her eyes suspiciously. "I got a feeling they are herding us!"

"Herding?" Akane cast a quick glance behind her. There was the same rock-hard sandy ground, sparse tufts of rough grass, and a lone tree. "Herding is usually done towards some place, not from an empty plain to the same empty plain!" She started suddenly, and turned to look behind her one more time. "What, an ambush in the tree...?" Though the crown was wide, it was see-through, and the branches were thin. "No, there's no one there. Besides, these dinosaurs are too massive to climb trees.

The said dinosaurs, meanwhile, made another aggressive step forward, all at once, their wide open maws emitting shrill squawks. Akane stepped back, thinking how she could better— And the ground fell from under her foot with an ugly splorching sound! Shuddering in a short-lived fright, she managed to pull her foot out while it still wasn't deeper than up to the ankle, all thanks to her lightning fast reflexes. She jumped away on instinct, faster than she could think, to land closer to the tree trunk. This time her other foot started sinking. It didn't dip any deeper, though, despite the momentum of her landing, as she was ready this time. Tearing her foot free — it seemed that the boot caught on something — Akane dodged upwards, where she grabbed with one hand onto a hanging branch, and continued hanging there, swinging around like a gibbon.

"Careful, there are traps here!" she voiced the obvious.

The dinosaurs erupted with disappointed clucking, then shifted their aim to Ranma.

"So that's how you want it to be!" the dust-colored girl was outraged. "All right, come get what you're asking for!" She attacked them headlong.

The dinosaurs rushed her, forming a large dogpile... Out of which they started flying in all directions, tumbling through the air. Being much bigger than velociraptors, this species of predator exchanged the former's swiftness for brute strength. The brute strength that was never of use against Ranma.

One, then another predator landed under the tree. Yelping like wounded rabbits, they jumped up to flee. One fell into a trap right away, the other one almost made it when the ground gave under its foot ten meter later. This was a cue for the rest of them to run away. Ranma was still holding one by the end of its tail, but it just kept windmilling its legs throwing sand at her in its urgent desire to get away. She simply released him. Soon there was no trace of the dinosaurs.

While Ranma was busy Akane could observe from above as the both unlucky dinosaurs thrashed, trying to get free. But they were just sinking deeper as if something was pulling at them from below. In just a few seconds their movement became jerky and stiff, soon leading to convulsions and then paralysis. When Ranma turned around she saw only two glassy-eyed carcasses, one leg of each sucked completely into the ground, up to their bodies.

"Be careful of poison there!" Akane did again warn about the obvious. She then noticed deep scratches on her boots glistening with slime. She shuddered. "I think these aren't traps but rather some animals hiding under the ground!"

"Animals?" Ranma looked around the innocent-looking part of savannah. There was not a hint of movement, nobody tried to pull the trapped predators deeper of gnaw on their underground legs. The silence was complete and still. The redhead closed her eyes and froze, tuning out everything but her chi senses. Then she shook up, opening her eyes. "Predatory plants, more likely. There's not just no killing intent from them, there's nothing at all. Like it's only grass there. Be so kind, throw me a stick."

"Plants?" Akane got a better hold, remembering with a shudder of how _suddenly_ ·it had happened. The danger sense she got used to rely upon to some extent, it stayed silent like a fish. "Would this do?" She snapped a branch with a palm chop, then in an another place, producing a stick of approximately a meter in length. She threw it to Ranma.

The redhead started moving carefully towards the closest carcass, all the while poking the stick at the ground in front of her in a semi-circular pattern. After one poke the stick pierced the earth, going deeper with a familiar disgusting splorch. Ranma started poking around inside the dark hole, which had the width of a palm. Then she pulled the stick out with an effort. It was sporting deep gouges, covered in a layer of slime.

"Just as I thought. There's a kind of a bag there, widens toward the bottom. With incurved thorns. It stinks definitely like a plant, like rotting roots."

"So these are everywhere?" Akane asked with horror, unable to tear her gaze away from the dead dinosaurs. There was not a hint, not a warning. A fleeting moment, and everything was over. For how long had they been running across this savannah, completely unaware!

"I don't think so," Ranma replied as she eyed the tree her wife was hanging from sceptically. "Do you remember any trees like this one? I got a feeling we haven't seen anything like it before."

"No, I don't think we have..." Akane drawled. The tree was huge, but kind of thin. A too-thin trunk, think branches with the ends hanging down. It crown was as wide as that of any baobab, but resembled a weeping willow. A scraggy weeping willow: there was too little foliage, making the crown see-through, and it was dark, looking lead-gray in the orange light of the sunset. Then Akane caught on the meaning. She almost fell off. "It's a man-eating tree?！"

"It is," Ranma agreed. "Don't fret, if it could devour with its branches it would've done you in already. Naw, it could only eat with its roots, growing traps under the ground. This is reassuring, you know. One tree couldn't have put these that far and wide around. We could go on without trouble, we just have to avoid trees like this. Let's check it right away, how far does it reach." She started walking in a widening spiral, poking at the ground.

Akane collected herself, then made one more stick and climbed down, poking at the ground at the base of the tree vigorously. She too started walking in a spiral. There were no traps close to the tree, but at some three meters these started emerging abruptly, spaced so tightly that she had to tread carefully. The ground near the narrow holes could sag suddenly, starting to slip into the poisonous orifice. This hinted at the bags being at least as wide as a barrel. Once, the unplugged hole erupted with a wave of overpowering stench of decay, making Akane stumble and almost fall for an another trap. After that, she was doubly careful as she continued defusing the minefield.

When Akane finished her spiral where Ranma started, and Ranma went well out, it became clear that the traps reached the edges of the tree crown, gradually becoming sparser.

"That's the limit of its reach," Ranma noted. The orange tones were becoming deeper, delving into reddish-orange. The shadows were grasping for infinity. "These lizards are scavengers, they don't look like hunters. Such a symbi-howza-ya-callit they have here. The tree is has to make do with single legs, while they eat everything above... Let's move it, the dark is falling soon. Is it far to the place?"

"No," Akane said quietly, depressed by the brutal mundanity of the death residing here. "It's only some fifty meters." She pointed away from the tree.

They found some barely noticeable sand bumps there. Ranma cautiously dredged one up wit her stick, to unearth a pile of bones with gnaw marks on them.

"The bastards bury it, making effort not to alert their prey." Abandoning all caution, she started plowing the bumps open. "Search for human ones. It should be safe here, they wouldn't choose this place otherwise."

Akane was digging diligently, but by far she was finding only animal bones. Some with strands of meat, even. "I'm afraid, we have to dig the ground. A bump like that couldn't have survived for twenty years." She was about to abandon her stick and dig with her hands, but then she thought better of it: such bastardly critters could have dropped poisonous barbs here.

They went pickaxing the packed earth with their sticks. They haven't been digging for long when Ranma stumbled on a chain, pulling a medallion exactly like theirs from the ground, its screen dark. Soon Akane uprooted a human skull. She gasped, then put it aside carefully, and continued digging so cautiously as if she was expecting to unearth a crystal vase. Her speed plummeted.

Ranma glanced at the sun. It didn't have far to go till horizon. "Let me unearth the remains," she said as she walked up to her wife. "You search for the token." She reached into the lean backpack on Akane's back, and pulled that huge hunting knife out.

"No, I can do this," Akane replied stubbornly.

"Then take the knife, at least. It's easier to dig with," Ranma insisted.

Akane looked at the knife doubtfully. But she took it, and using it she really sped up.

Seeing the delay averted, Ranma went plowing the sandy ground with two sticks in a widening spiral.

(シーンブレイク)

Ami was feeling very awkward. Only a titanic exertion of will was allowing her to refrain from scratching and fidgeting: the woolen dress was _prickling_. And chafing. And irritating. It wouldn't be so bad if she wasn't wearing _only_ ·this woolen dress. Ahstat proved to be... In short, she could haggle more aggresssively than even Akane-chan's elder sister.

It all began with Ami arriving in a state of dress grossly improper by the local standards. Not to mention that it was _cold_ ·in only a brasserie and mini-skirt, she attracted the eyes of what looked like the entire male population of the valley. Someone even barely avoided falling from the watchtower. Ami blushed, ducked her head and wished again that ground would open and swallow her up. The very memory of these events was making her cheeks heat up!

Later it was found, that such a basic thing as a modern lingerie is practically worth its weight in gold in this world. And then, the shy girl just couldn't say 'no' when Ahstat, calculating like a hundred Nabikis, started to haggle.

Well, she couldn't say 'no' loud enough. The fact, that she and Ahstat were roughly the same size, sealed her fate. Ami shivered, remembering how _deftly_ ·she was liberated of the lingerie. She just began protesting weakly when, and instant later, she found herself in her birthday suit. And now she was a proud owner of the monstrously itchy green dress.

Wincing when she made an awkward movement, Ami thought that, on the positive side, she was at least kept distracted from worrying about Akane-chan and Ranma-kun.

(シーンブレイク)

"Ain't this what we're searching for?" Ranma inquired.

Akane didn't reply, busy digging with the knife and her hands. Earth fountaining, the hole was growing deeper with each second. She had found several ribs and two shin-bones. Now she was carefully unearthing the... third shin-bone? Akane frowned. Something was wrong here. She put the bone to the rest of them, and continued digging. Pity they couldn't find every bone. Scavengers surely scattered them wide, you have to have a shovel and a week. The girls had neither. Akane shivered. Dying like that, suddenly, to be buried hastily, two decades later... She continued digging.

"What sort of mockery is this?" Ranma exclaimed in outrage as she straightened up to stand there hip-shot.

"What?" Akane stopped digging and jumped out of the asymmetric hole. "What's the matter?" She walked up to her husband, and saw the redhead glaring at an orange-sized shiny ball, visible through the parted fabric of a rotten bag. "It's... It's a token, isn't it?" She beamed. "We found it!" She hastily reached down to grab it.

"Wait, it's all—" Ranma tried to stop her, but failed. Akane touched the ball, turning for a brief moment into a mirror statue. A line of unintelligible black characters popped up over her head, fading quickly. The raven-haired girl didn't notice, startled by her medallion suddenly erupting with a corny stirring melody.

Akane straightened up sharply, trying to open it. It was awkward with one hand, so she thrust the ball at Ranma: "Take it!"

Ranma received the suspicious object with apprehension, an imaginary icy paw stroking her along her back: for that moment when Akane was a mirror statue, her movement ceased abruptly, violating all the laws of inertia — just to continue as unnaturally. And more, when she was straightening up, there was a sudden jump in her movement, like a film with a few frames cut out of it. Ranma was feeling extremely ill at ease. What was that? What did just happen to them? Most disturbing was the fact that she didn't feel anything at all. Her danger sense kept silent, as did her other ki senses.

"Right!" Akane informed joyfully as she continued digging through the medallion. "This one is the first of seven. We have six more to collect and — just listen! — there's a, um, 'leading hypercontinuum loop' reserved for us! It will show us the coordinates of the rest of these." Her enthusiasm wilted a bit. "Though, I can't figure out how to—"

"Seven, you say?" Ranma asked, examining the ball resting on her palm. "This is definitely some sort of mockery! Just look at this! It's even the four-star one, to add insult to injury!"

"The four-star one?" Akane said, incomprehension clear in her voice, as she tore her eyes from the screen to take a good look at the token, at last.

The ball lying on Ranma's palm shone like liquid metal, reflecting the deep orange of the dusk sky with its inner, mirror-like surface, where the outer surface was transparent. Adding to the weirdness, four pitch-black squiggles were floating lazily inside the ball.

"Does it remind you of something?" Ranma asked grimly.

"No." Akane lifted her eyes to look at her. "Should it?"

"Oh, right, it's for boys..." Ranma grumbled under her breath. Then she explained: "In short, there's a manga I read when I was a kid. There's a dragon there who could grant any wish. To summon him, you have to collect seven dragonballs from all around the world." She held the ball out for Akane to get a better look. "What's peculiar, these are right about this size, just with stars inside them, rather than runes. The story begins with the heroes finding the four-star one... Now tell me it's not a scam!"

"Well, I don't know. Maybe Ahs-Asch read that manga too, and he really liked the idea. Anyway, the medallion received a confirmatory message, and our portal quota is now unlimited.

"Really?" Ranma perked up. "Then we could shift Ami back and forth whenever we need to use her!"

"She's not a thing," Akane chided her spouse mildly. A resounding smack upside the head rolled over the wide savannah.

(シーンブレイク)

Ranma destroyed the killer tree with a powerful ki blast. Akane cast a disapproving look at such a waste of energy, but did not say anything. As it fell, the brittle trunk smashed to several pieces. One was good for a tombstone. Ranma got all sweaty and huffy while she was cutting a flat space on the front side, enough for the inscription. Then they remembered that they forgot to ask Laeedath the name of the departed one. Ranma shrugged, and proceeded to carve 'RAIDATU' in katakana, placing the four large, rune-like letters vertically, as it is proper for tombstones. Akane added several large rocks to surround the sandy bump, and placed the rusty rifle barrel on top. There was nothing more they could do for the nameless member of the wise women clan. They only had to bring her medallion back to her relatives.

They stood in front of the grave in respectful silence for a few minutes. Akane even apologized to the spirit of the departed for the burial not being as thorough as it should be. Then the girls turned around and went towards the pyramid. The crimson glow of sunset was fading quickly, turning the plain into a featureless gray field. They ran, giving every tree a wide berth, not inclined to bet their lives on their ability to not mistake the species of a tree in the darkness.

The closer to the pyramid, the more trees were there. Ranma was positive these were the man-eating kind. A kilometer from the transport node the trees became so dense that the girls had to slow down and search for a non-threatened space in this labyrinth. The distances between the trees were still too great to tree-hop.

"Shit," Ranma swore. "I just knew, I had to search harder, to find the secret of these monks who knew how to stand on a floating reed."

"Aren't these all tall tales?" Akane replied doubtfully, more concerned about the lack of sticks. The hairs on the back of her neck were crawling from the anticipation of her foot falling through the ground, followed by a few seconds of mortal terror, of knowing that you are already done for, then convulsions... She shuddered. It could be even worse. Ranma could fall for a trap, leaving her crying over the lifeless body.

Then she remembered suddenly that there were no traps near the trunk! Taking a short run, she ignored Ranma's warning shout and made a huge leap. She landed next to the trunk of one killer tree.

"Raitsui Dan! (Thunder Hammer Strike)"

The ki blast that hit the tree was enough to knock down a bull. The tree hummed, shivering from the force of the blast and shedding some of its brittle branches. But it remained standing.

"Raitsui Dan!" Akane wasn't about to give up. She put thrice more power into her technique this time. The ball of charged air came out thrice as big. It hit the tree — thin, well anchored with its root — and flowed around it, like a tidal wave passing around an impenetrable rock. The trunk emitted a long creaking noise, there was some debris falling down Akane's collar, but that was all.

Akane glared frowningly at the resilient plant. Her idea was crashing down. To break a tree, she'd have to put everything she had into the blast. She'll wear out too soon! A half-dozen, maybe a dozen trees, and she'll be like a wrung-out rag. But they had to hurry!

Gritting her teeth, Akane turned around to look at the redhead. The other girl was standing there with her arms crossed, a pointed skepticism writ on her face. He didn't have any trouble breaking a tree! Am I so much weaker? Akane turned back to glare at the tree. Nothing like that, she realized. Ranma just made his more concentrated. While the more power I put in mine, the bigger it comes out. And still useless. What could I do? One needs months of training to learn concentrating energy like that... Wait, what if I try like this? She stepped closer, and imitated the motions of the technique. Her open palms stopped almost touching the trunk. Yes, this should work. Ki won't have time to expand, the energy will be all put to work. Now, easy...

"Raitsui Dan!"

Akane was thrown back by the recoil for more than a meter, her boots leaving furrows in the ground. Her palms were buzzing like she tried to slap a steel ingot. But the tree fared much worse. The point-blank ki blast breaking it, it let out a long, sufering creak, then crashed down, breaking its thin, hanging branches with sharp cracks. How come the wind haven't toppled them all if they are so brittle? Akane took a running start on the downed tree trunk, and leaped, reaching the next one easily. The parasitic trees were much taller than they were wide, some thirty meters in height.

"Oh, I see!" Ranma approved as she made a mouthpiece with her palms. "But land on the tree the next time, all right? Just in case!" She repeated her wife's maneuver, grabbing a stick as she did so. But she slammed into the rough trunk at the end of her arch, letting out a muffed 'oof'. "A koala!" she mumbled with no reason, still hanging there, even hugging the tree tighter, to Akane's puzzlement.

"Bakusai Tenketsu! (Blasting Weak Point)"

The explosion left Ranma practically untouched, while leaving a sizable crater in the opposite side of the tree.

"It's safer this way," the redhead explained as she jumped down to the ground and started shaking her right hand that suffered a few splinters. "You aren't thrown back. There's no guarantee there'd be no traps near the trunk the next time. She aimed, then kicked sharply at the tree with a loud shout. The tree stood there for a moment, contemplating to fall or not to fall, and groaning noisily. Then it collapsed. "Let's go." Ranma bent down to grab her stick. "At such a rate we—" The stick fell from her uncooperative fingers. "Wha...?"

Akane stared at the other girl, a wave of nauseatingly intense horror washing over her. The right hand. Ranma lifted it to her face, it was hard to see in the dark. The small splinters that got under her skin... Her fingers weren't responding, muscles went stiff. Ranma hurried to pluck all the splinters out with her good hand.

"Don't fret," she proclaimed, her voice wavering. "The dose was most surely not big enough..." She started rubbing at her paralyzed arm.

Akane was panicking. Should she do that? Shouldn't they apply a tourniquet? Or suck the poison out first?

An anguished minute passed. Then another one. Rana managed to twitch her little finger. She hopped on one foot, testing her balance.

"That was close..."

Akane wasn't sure who of them said that.

"Bakusai Tenketsu is out," concluded Ranma. "I'm such a moron I didn't figure it earlier. The branches hang low, the first large herbivore would... Well, maybe it's a trap exactly for them. Whatever. Anyway, we'll have to rely on your Raitsui Dan. I'm one-handed for a while. We'll just be checking the ground behind you." She grabbed the stick with her good hand.

They went on. After the tenth tree - or was it the twentieth one? Akane wasn't feeling her hands anymore, these turned into a solid lump of buzzing, pulsating pain. But there was a long way ahead, and lots of trees to topple. She was repeating stubbornly in her mind that a little pain wouldn't kill her.

She stood almost touching the tree with a mechanical motion learned by rote, waiting while Ranma checks the ground behind her...

"..nough. Are you hearing me? Enough!" The redhead was shaking her by her shoulder. "They are growing densely enough here, let's go by the branches!"

Their way through the tree-tops was a memorable experience. One girl had her hands concussed, stiff and barely feeling. The other one had one working arm. They were swinging from branch to branch like two masochistic, crippled gibbons, while the brittle branches kept breaking under their weight. Thankfully, it wasn't for long. Near the pyramid, the trees were packed so densely that one could simply jump across thicker branches where the crowns intertwined.

There was a road paved with stone coming from the pyramid entrance. It was overgrown with grass, a narrow track left by wagon wheels barely visible. All the man-eating trees at the sides of the road were cut down for a half hundred meters in each direction. The stumps had time to rot and crumble.

"Makes you wonder," Ranma commented darkly. "It's unlikely that the old hag set us up. Meaning, she is kept ignorant by someone else. Someone who profits from using this node while all the other tribes keep thinking there are especially dire dinosaurs living here." She rubbed at her arm, the ability to move it was returning. "I understand that one's own village's well-being is always prevalent and stuff, but... I think, this poison is purely paralytic. I never stopped feeling with that arm. So, unless your heart stops...

"Then those trapped are being eaten alive, fully conscious?" Akane's eyes rounded from the horrifying realization. "Those people, who distribute the false rumors, are scum!" She shuddered, and Ranma couldn't tell if it was from terror or from a desire to wring a neck or two.

"It's possible that this alien crap wasn't introduced here by accident," Ranma added with venom. "Growing only around the portal, the closer, the denser... I wouldn't want to go through the world these trees originate from."

They opened the portal straight to the roof of the house where Laeedath lived. Knocking perfunctorily, Ranma let herself in. Then she froze. Akane bumped into her, looked over her shoulder, and froze as well.

Ami was sitting at the table, dressed in a green woolen dress. She was busily working a medallion. The fingers of her right hand were practically fluttering. She held a forgotten chunk of bread with cheese in her left.

"Ami-chan?" Akane asked with confusion as she pulled her own medallion out by the chain, to make sure it was still there. "I thought your quota was over-drafted?"

The elder Laeedath said nothing, but her eyes were full of such painful longing, that Ranma involuntarily put the mystery aside, going straight to business: "We... found her. Here." She held the inert medallion out to the old woman.

The old woman's hands trembled as she accepted it. "How did she die?" Her voice was dull, tense.

"She—" Ranma faltered. She was feeling a strong aversion to telling the truth. "Quickly. There's a man-eating tree, your foot falls into a barbed pit trap, the poison is strong and quick. Then dinosaurs finished..."

"So that's how." The elder Laeedath opened the medallion. It woke to life as it hadn't been lying for twenty years exposed to the elements. She sat there for a long time, looking through the screen with unseeing eyes. Then she collected herself, and entered a short command. The medallion beeped, becoming for a brief moment mirror-like, as if it was chromed, instead of coppery-reddish. Her own medallion erupted with a short, annoying melody. "It's over," said the old woman. "Granddaughter, come here." She entered an another command, this one a bit longer.

Ahstat entered at once, like she was listening right beyond the curtain. She approached slowly, with trepidation. Ranma got a feeling she's seeing some sort of sacred ritual. The young woman accepted the medallion with both hands, like some treasure. The mechanism beeped, all-too ordinarily, at the odds with the solemnity of the moment. Old woman's one erupted with an annoying, corny martial music. Ahstat put the medallion around her neck — slowly, still with trepidation. Then the old and the young embraced each other, and just stood there like that for almost a minute in silence.

Akane felt very awkward: she and Ranma were witnessing something deeply personal.

(シーンブレイク)

"Ami-chan, wasn't your quota over-drafted?" Akane asked again, as soon as she put the other girl down on the roof, away from prying ears. "And where did the second interactor come from?"

"Don't worry," Ami reassured her. "When you found the token, our quota became technically unlimited for any applications related to the portals. Zero cost to open, zero per second."

"Cool," approved Ranma.

"But that's only while one of us holds at least one token," Ami hurried to clarify. "Concerning this medallion... I grabbed at the opportunity co create myself... No, this is not an interactor. There could be only one per the three of us. It's a portal controller, its functions are very limited. You can control the portals, read the encyclopedia—"

"That doesn't make it less cool," Ranma reassured her. "I'm sure you'll succeed even with this one, given time... By the way, let's swap, shall we? We only need it to open portals—"

"No," Ami interrupted her. "You'll need the extended map functionality that this one doesn't... What am I saying. The most important thing, this portal controller does have one function," she held her medallion up, displaying its screen, "that your standard issue interactor doesn't have. There's an inappropriate use for this function, that allows me to observe living organisms addressing them by DNA. Here, watch this."

"That's great," Ranma said as she leaned closer to look at the screen. There was a mess of hair-thin black lines moving on the greenish glowing background. "Hey, it's me!" The meaningless lines suddenly turned out to be a line art, like a manga with bad hatchwork. She realized she was seeing a bird-eye panorama centered on herself, Akane and Ami. "I can even see my pigtail!" She lifted her eyes to stare at Ami. "So we could find Usagi like this? Great! Us going for that token has already paid off."

"It's not that simple... Well, not really. There are purely technical difficulties. But I still need her genetic material. The Tsukino residence would be the best place to search for it, so we now go to Tokyo immediately."(note 5) Ami typed something in her medallion, and a portal arch opened behind her, showing the mirror hall. "Let's go. I was only waiting for you." There was an another arch open already, not visible from their position but causing a strong wind to blow out of the portal, flapping Ami's hair. The distant noise of the big city was distant but instantly recognizable amidst the quiet town.

"Wait!" exclaimed Akane. "We didn't tell the granny the entire truth!"

"Don't worry," Ranma reassured her. "She is experienced, she'll add two and two somehow."

"Come on, people are getting nervous," Ami hurried them. "Besides, we can't keep the portal open for too long."

"How comes, if there are no limits?" Ranma asked with suspicion as she stepped after her through the portal.

"We have them lifted, but the machines that create the portals do have their own limits." Ami walked out to Tokyo through the adjacent arch. "When connecting over such large distances as we did just now, they would overload in a few minutes, forcing an emergency disconnect. I don't want to learn what would happen in such a case." She turned around to make sure that Akane went with them. "Ahs-seven eetaht ashech uschst, close the portal."

"We are friends! Friends!" Akane shouted nervously, addressing the soldiers who were aiming at them from the cover of their sand-bag barricades. "Senshi business!"

"Couldn't you have chosen a, you know, less crowded spot?" Ranma inquired as she looked around the huge construction site stretching in all directions. It turns out, they disembarked inside the big, flat crater left by the demon's portal. Water had been pumped out, thick ridged hoses stretching up and beyond its edges. Further than that, there were wary soldiers of the self-defense force, tanks and machine-gun nests. Further still, there was building machinery working on clearing the ruins.

"You shouldn't just emerge like that, without warning!" a JSDF army officer berated them as he walked up to the girls.

"I'm sorry," Ami replied sheepishly. "This place is a weak spot in the inter-universe barriers. We... couldn't land anywhere else." She cast a look around the hastily erected defences. "It's a good thing you have organized a defensive perimeter here. Any Ahs-user can open portal here, this zone is... already a part of Ahs." Suddenly, she fell silent and started typing in the medallion. "But you have to move the line twenty three meters back. The contaminated zone is wider than this crater, the portal could open behind you!"

"Excuse me, whom I have the honor to talk to...?" the army officer inquired.

"Sailor Mercury, i..incognoto. I need... I need help to organize... I'm sorry, I cannot hold any longer..." Ranma and Akane cast puzzled sidelong glances at such an uncharacteristic behavior. "Hold it for a while! Excuse me, it's urgent!" Throwing her medallion at Akane, she dashed away, beyond the defensive perimeter. She hid behind some tank, there was a flash of blue accompanied with a shout of "Mercury Star Power, Make-Up!" and a... moan of relief? Then Mercury walked out, calm and collected as always. "Wait here, I'll be back soon!" she shouted to the two and bounded away across rooftops, opening her communicator on the run.

"Our magic doesn't work inside this zone," Akane explained to the puzzled army officer as she put the medallion with its chain away in her pocket. To be honest, she was puzzled herself. What an itch had been urging Ami-chan to hurry like that, to the point of fumbling with words? "We have to rely on our martial arts. Well, and on Mercury. I don't know what would we do without her ability to figure everything out."

"I see." The army officer left them alone, to start giving orders. Soon it was noisy around: the soldiers were dragging sandbags, the tanks tracks were clanking as the heavy machines backed away.

"Let's wait then, Miss Talkative." Ranma expropriated a sandbag to sit down on it, cross-legged. She pulled a bag containing the token out from her shirt, opened it, and pulled the orb out. In the normal daylight it turned to be silvery, shining like liquid mercury. "Hm. Well, at least it isn't orange... I suspect we'd better not leave the zone with this thing."

"Why?" Akane asked, surprized.

"Well, it's an important part of Ahs," Ranma explained as she closed one eye shut trying to look through the ball against the sky. "But Ahs kind of ends on the border of this zone. Who knows what would happen if we try to carry it out? Maybe nothing happens. Maybe it unravels like our seifukus here. Or this zone grows to contain it. Or things go boom like that moment when Usagi... In short I'm in no hurry to test it."

"You think so?" Akane looked at the token with new eyes. Till now, she had been perceiving it in a purely positive light, their precious means to save Usagi. But if this thing could be dangerous... She felt ill at ease. "Could..." She shivered slightly. "Could that knight trace us using this token? How do you think?"

"Who knows." Ranma shrugged. "I, myself, would like to know where is he, and what in the hell was he trying to accomplish."

(シーンブレイク)

A short, short-legged, armor-clad figure is floating in some unrecognizable space. There's no clear distinction between up and down. Glowing lines run in all directions disappearing in a multi-colored haze. There are thousands of portals floating around, leading to a vast variety of places, though most show only the starry blackness of deep space.

Turning his head at a signal only he can hear, the knight transfers himself to one particular portal, making no visible effort. There's a conference hall visible on the other side, with several people gathered around a podium, and a crowd of reporters. Photo flashes are going off, bulky television cameras standing in a row on their tripods.

"Oh, so they decided, at long last." The knight gestures the portal to become double-sided. The photo reporters explode in a frenzy of flashes that attenuates the mirror-like curves of his armor, visible through the oval that had appeared suddenly in mid-air. The slick, elongated, visor-less helmet casts glares of reflected light, utterly devoid of expression.

"I'm glad we were able to come to an agreement," the knight begins in a tired voice. However, everyone present hears only the emotion-less voice of the mechanic translation: English is not among the languages he bothered to learn. "Now concerning liaisons. From my side the persons responsible for—"

"You haven't understood," the head of the delegation interrupts him. The imposing man, in his fifties, towers over the tribune, authoritative and unyielding. A wreath of gray hair surrounds his bald head that casts sharp glares of reflected right. "We have gathered here today to declare your demands unacceptable!"

"Excuse me?" Irritation is showing clear in the knight's voice. He crosses his arms. "I thought I made it clear that—"

"The people of the free world will newer bow to such kind of dictate!" The entire world is watching him now with the eyes of many television cameras. Well, what is left of it after the recent, very unfortunate, nuclear missile incident.

"I fail to follow your meaning. Don't you understand what would happen to your planet if you refuse?"

"Baseless, unsubstantiated claims." The orator is confident. If this... alien posed a real threat, he wouldn't be wasting time on words. No, they'd already have an invasion fleet in orbit. It's naive to presume that someone having power wouldn't use it. So this humanoid in a hi-tech medieval armor is 'all bark, no bite' as they like to say in the United States. Or, to be exact, as they _liked_ ·to say when that country was still there. "The British scientists checked everything, there's no threat of ecological catastrophe, not even a slightest sign." Not entirely true. Or, frankly, entirely untrue. But the TV audience doesn't have to know. Besides, what is a couple hundred millions more, compared to what had already happened? Less mouths to feed. The more so that Argentine, South Africa and Australia found themselves not ready for the burden of being superpowers, having become ones so suddenly.

"Your so called scientists don't have a thousandth of my resources." The knight is practically growling, he never had patience for such types. "For the last time, I suggest you to reconsider. There won't be a second chance!"

If they could hear the bared menace in his voice, they'd think twice how to answer. But the sterilized, impersonal translation they hear is deceptive, lulling them into a false sense of safety.

"The UN Charter—" the head of the delegation begins pompously.

"Your UN lies in radioactive ashes," the knight interrupts him. "Together with its head-quarters, New York and the entire Northern hemisphere. I want to hear your own answer, not some worm-eaten dogmas. Your personally, and the other delegates. I was under impression that the persons gathered here are the ones having the power to make decisions in the current situation.

"And we say NO!" thunders the man on the podium.

The delegates approve noisily, playing righteous outrage and staunch recalcitrance. All for the sake of the multitude of television cameras. They'll show that no alien dictator could force his will over the people of the Free World!

The knight emits an unintelligible sound. Alas, his extreme irritation doesn't show in his posture, and the mechanical translation keeps silent. A long silence follows, full of self-esteem from one side, and teeth gnashing from another. Then the knight asks suddenly, in a very kind and caring voice: "So your surname is Zinkerman, you said?"

"Yes, Zinkerman," the head replies in a neutral voice, puzzled and thus wary. Any oddities in politics of this level are fraught with trouble. More so when negotiating with an unknown side. "You should have received a list. Chosen by the people of the Free world, delegates Hughes, Eighinson—"

"Enough!" the knight interrupts, rubbing his hands together. His voice is laden with such a predatory, primeval joy that if the delegates could hear it, their hair would be standing on its ends now. "I happen to have a specialist at hand, who will have a solution. A _final_ ·solution... Wait there, he'll arrive shortly."

Everyone gathered feels a sickly cold crawling along their spines. These words about a 'final solution'... A coincidence of course, no alien could know the Earth history that well, could he? Many suddenly remember how replaceable they are, the main reason that the real powers that be put them here to play this farce. This makes them feel even more ill at ease.

The knight, meanwhile, pays them no mind, busy working his virtual manipulator. From the side this looks as him weaving complex patterns in the air with his hands.

Suddenly, a portal opens right on the podium. Alarmed, the delegates retreat away. A tall man of athletic build steps into the hall from the portal. He crosses his arms and just stands there silently, casting a dirty look around. The portal closes behind his back.

The delegates recognize the new arrival. They are horrified. One yelps pitifully, another one crawls back on all fours in blind panic. Because, despite the well muscled body, the blond hair and the steel-blue eyes of a true Aryan, he is instantly recognizable. These peculiar features, this slicked sideways bang, this little square of mustache... Even a kid would recognize him instantly.

Some guard panics and shoots. An untraceable arm movement, and the newcomer opens his fist, dropping crushed bullets to the carpet.

"Delegates, you say," the Aryan says with a quiet anger. "Of the _free world_." He fixes his glare on each of them in turn, and his jaw muscles start to tighten. "It wasn't enough for you what you did to my Fatherland."(note 6) His nostrils flare from a barely restrained hatred. His eyes start glowing blue. "It wasn't enough for you to dominate the whole world. Now even on its ruins you—"

"Shoot! Shoot" the head of the delegation screams at the top of his lungs while his colleagues are crawling under the chairs or chewing on their neckties. His voice falters, turning into falsetto. This doesn't really suit his stony face and heroic posture. But he is playing to the end. The guards start shooting erratically, risking to hit the numerous reporters. Bullets are flattening against the Aryan, falling down and littering the carpet.

" _Shoot, shoot,_ " he says in German, sneering derisively. A bluish aura lights around him, suffused with lightning bolts. "All the money of the whole world can't help you now!" A pair of ghostly crystalline wings opens behind his back, resembling stylized eagle wings. The blond nightmare begins to rise into the air. " _Because I have returned. And god I am._ "

The knight watches his minion picking up steam with all the tenderness of a grandmother watching the antics of her favorite grandchild. Then he closes the portal. The cries of despair were music for his ears, soothing his nerves frayed by conversing with democrats. What a useful addition to the team! It doesn't even have to be a real Zionist conspiracy. It's enough to make it look like one, for him to fly off the handle! Such dedication, such aggression!

"So. This world could be written off as dealt with," the knight concludes with satisfaction. "Now, did I forget something... Oh!" Slapping his armored forehead with a clang, he starts inputting a search command on his virtual manipulator. Soon he finds what he sought. The window portal opening in front of him shows a bird's eye panorama of a savannah with sparse, dry grass and an occasional wide-branching tree.

"Excellent!" he exclaims with satisfaction in his voice, rubbing his armored hands together. "It couldn't be better!" He zooms the view in, bringing the portal closer to the ground to better see a blond figure trudging across this inhospitable landscape.

(シーンブレイク)

Sun was sinking towards the horizon, not as scorching now as it was during the day. But the air still remained intolerably hot. Usagi was barely dragging her feet, suffering from thirst and hunger. She hadn't found any water yet, whick made her think grim thoughts. But even more depressing was the complete, absolute solitude, alien to the very nature of the outgoing girl. Completing her misery, her left shoe tore and now kept falling off her foot. The dry grass here was as soft and inwiting as barbed wire.

Usagi stopped, letting out a sigh that sounded more like a sob. She was dearly missing her friends, but even more she was missing her loved one. Were he here now... She squashed that thought, it would only make her suffering worse in the end. "It's a lesson for you, lazy bunny," she berated herself silently. "Grew used to hanging back while others attack in your stead? Try now to make it alone, for a change!"

Alone... She let out an another sigh. But there is no sense crying when there's no one to listen to you. She couldn't even find solace in hoping that she was stranded somewhere in Africa. Usagi glanced at the twin, red-hot moons glowing dull crimson like a pair of malevolent eyes glaring at her from beyond the darkening sky. She wasn't on Earth anymore. And now her empty stomach was growling again... No, wait.

Usagi lifted her head. There, in front of her, towered a mountain of a beast. Only its eyes were visible, glinting dimly against the black silhouette outlined by sunset. The nape of its neck bulged much higher than Usagi's head.

"Oh, it was _your_ ·stomach growling!" she exclaimed with relief.

The beast continued staring at her. Then it licked its chops, noisily.

Usagi gulped.

(シーンブレイク)

May 28 .. October 6, 2012. Translated July 23 .. November 3, 2012

 **Ding!** Tropes unlocked:  
Never Bring a Knife to a Fist Fight

 **Author's notes:**

 **1**  
The old lady is not that good with firearms.

 **2**  
For Ranma, Ryouga and Mousse versus monkeys, see vol. 24, chapter 5 of the manga.

 **3**  
It's often incorrectly thought that Ranma is averse to using weapons. While the truth is that any weapons short of epic/legendary magical ones are useless trash for him, at his advanced level. And the Ranmaverse isn't exactly teeming with legendary weapons, Gekkaja and Kinjakan non-withstanding.

 **4**  
Re-read the manga and you'll see that the heroes prefer running to bounding/leaping whenever possible.

 **5**  
In the anime episode 36, Kunzite of Dark Kingdom tried to identify Sailor Moon by DNA, after he got his hands on some of her hair.

 **6**  
Did you expect him to be fair and objective? Even in the slightest? No way. If you could resurrect him, he'd tell you a mind-screwing tale about Jews being the true villains, doing unspeakable things to _him_ ·(and his homeland), while he lived and died a hero, fighting the world-encompassing evil. Double standards? No, it's something more. Double standards cry in the corner here, green with envy.

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— Pusakuronu, who had single-handedly slain 126 (one hundred and twenty six) blunders of mine, 46 of them being missing commas.  
— Crystal  
— Orphus users (2 bugs so far)  
— Orphus users (10 bugs so far)  
— Orphus users (5 bugs so far)  
— Orphus users (9 bugs so far)


	14. The Senshi and the Grim Darkness of 90s

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled**

 **Chapter 14  
The Senshi and the Grim Darkness of the Russian 90s**

(シーンブレイク)

"Guys!" Ranma yelled merrily as she leaned out of the portal. "Come here, we'll give you a ride home!"

"At last!" Venus detransformed into Minako. She started striding towards the portal, swaying slightly when her bare feet made contact with a more sharp pebble.

Others followed her example, voicing their approval noisily. They were fed up with sitting in this middle of nowhere waiting for who knows what.

"When we get home," Minako drawled dreamily as she approached the portal, "The first thing I'll do will be taking a norm—"

She was whirled around sharply, there was a sound of cloth ripping, and the blond fell flat on the hall floor, partially sliding out of her jeans. Ranma closed her eyes shut instantly: she remembered that the other girl didn't have panties on her. A torn off button clattered on the floor.

"What's wrong?"  
"What happened?"  
"Minako-chan!"

The girls clamored, there was a rush of hurried footsteps, then a weak but resounding slap not unlike that from a rubber band. Rei's yelp of surprise was followed by someone gasping in pain. Ranma un-squinted sharply, taking everything in at once like a still shot. Rei was standing awkwardly just inside the hall, in the process of making a step. Makoto was outside, stumbling back while bending forward to clutch at her solar plexus. Rei's wand was falling to the ground outside. Minako was face down, her pants pulled down like she caught with her left pocket on something. The round buttocks shone softly, making Ranma avert her eyes in annoyance. There was no time for distractions, something weird had just happened!

"Stop!" Ami reacted at last. "It doesn't let your henshin wands through!" She pointed at the Mars henshin wand lying at the threshold.

"I... ungh... can feel that" the hunched down Makoto squeezed out. She took a sensitive hit at her solar plexus when she ran into her henshin wand that was tucked away in her cleavage.

"Just great," Rei grumbled as she bent down to grab her wand.

"Is this some sort of mockery?" Akane was indignant. Pulling her own henshin wand out, she put it through the portal and back, without any resistance. "My wand passes."

"Well, mine doesn't," Haruka stated, tapping her wand against an invisible barrier.

"What the demon is going on?" Ranma voiced everyone's puzzlement as she put her wand through. "We all had been going through portals many times, and nothing like this ever happened!"

Ami frowned, tapping keys. Then she pulled her wand out and put it through the portal without a slightest resistance.

"Let me guess," Ranma suggested. "That's because of the token, right? There are portals, and then there are portals?"

Ami stood working the medallion for about three minutes. Then she confirmed, looking like she needed headache medicine sorely: "You guess is right. The rights escalation led to... a change in filters. In fact, all the henshin wands, except the three belonging to us, are now treated as manifestations of an aggressive environment. Like concentrated acid or objects possessing high kinetic energy. I don't know yet how to circumvent this limitation..." She rubbed at the bridge of her nose. "Give me a couple hours and I—"

"Don't," Haruka interrupted her forcefully. "Focus on saving Usagi, we'll get there on our own. Right, girls?"

"Of course!" Minako replied first, with a sincere enthusiasm. "It's our Earth. Its northern wastes, at that, not some jungle with crocodiles. And we are ourselves again!" She stroked her henshin wand in her pocket without thinking. "We'll get there in a jiffy!"

"It's Siberia, with bears," Rei corrected her. "But other than that, you are right. How many thousands kilometers do we have to go?"

"You only have to get to a nearest town with airport," Ami noted.

"Oh gods, no." Makoto paled.

"Are you sure?" Ami asked. "It would be easier for me to focus on searching Usagi, but—"

"No 'buts'," Michiru rejected flatly. "Our situation is but a petty annoyance. Work, don't let yourself be distracted."

"Then, let's get ready. I think half a hour would be enough," Ranma suggested. "Me and Akane need to prepare for hiking too. Now, with limits gone—"

"You'll be sorry," Akane warned her, "If we stumble again on a world where ki doesn't work. You'll get on my nerves with your whining if we have to lighten our backpacks again."

"So what?" The redhead shrugged. "Is that a reason to give up? I don't think so." She then turned to look at the girls chilling beyond the portal. "Come on, choose who goes to Tokyo with us to get supplies while the rest watches over their henshin wands."

"We don't have time for shopping," Akane reminded. "And we are out of money."

"Damn..." Ranma took a look around. "Hey, let's task the soldiers with this. They have to have some field supplies."

Thus, Ranma and Akane went early. They had turned the self-defense forces into an upended anthill making many a lieutenant run around. But they got their rope, an inflatable boat, a couple of sturdy backpacks and enough nominally-edible MREs to last a week. The two had said their hasty good-bye, then disappeared in the portal.

After that, Makoto, Haruka and Rei went shopping. They weren't in a particular hurry, after all. Ami would open the portal for them. She stayed in the contaminated zone, creating a flurry of activity. Soon the soldiers were looking even more like an upended anthill. They were running to and fro, bringing the equipment she requested. It looked like they'd appropriate a personal modular cabin for her needs.

The shopping trip did not take long. The girls only had to traverse half a thousand kilometers off-road. In their Senshi forms, with some effort, they could simply run that distance in a day. But in the light of the last trends, no one wanted to rely on their magic alone. They were buying mostly clothes. In case a certain accident repeats, or they have to blend in playing tourists. Most shops in the neighborhood were closed, so the girls had to rely on that same "Surbaibasu Kouneru" they used to shop before the northern battle. Its owner, a survivalist nut, looked all too happy because of the disaster going around. Made one wonder why he haven't been asked to close. The choice of goods was matching: the girls had to don baggy camo suits of gray tones. They unanimously refused the heavy boots with ribby soles: how could they buy these for Minako and Michiru without a try-on? They chose padded nylon boots with Velcro fasteners, to the shopkeeper's consternation. To complete the masquerade, the girls bought backpacks and very little camping gear. The survivalist was disappointed with them, but they weren't intending to use this stuff seriously anyway.

Returning to the zone, they found to their displeasure that Ami got distracted from her work anyway, to prepare a set of maps and instructions for them. The departing three began refusing, insisting that she stays and that they would be fine. Everything to return her to the primary task. Ami didn't give up, though. She went into the mirror hall with them, all the while making marks on the map and explaining the road to them. They barely dissuaded her from following them to the other side.

Then they managed at last to send her on her way. The portal closed finally, cutting them off in the northern barrens.

"Honestly!" exclaimed Rei. "You'd think it would be a disaster if we got lost here for a week or two!"

"We'd be better off without any maps!" Minako added, curling her bare feet on the freezing ground: she went into the antimagic zone to meet them. "It would be a real adventure then! But now, knowing that just a couple hundred kilometers to the south there's a highway and civilization... Feh, boring."

"Tokyo could be attacked without us," Neptune reminded, calling from beyond the edge of the zone.

"So what?" The blond wasn't giving up. "Mercury is there, with so many soldiers that they substitute for the usual crowds. If it's anything less than Gojira, they'll flatten it in no time. That's it, if it doesn't hide at the first sight of them."

"What if it is something serious?" Haruka tested her determination.

"If it's something serious..." Minako's face turned grim. "We'd be useless anyway. Without Moon and Sol..."

"I'm thinking along these lines," Haruka agreed suddenly. "All right, here is your clothing, get—"

"Ooh, you didn't even forget panties!" The blond exclaimed in joy as she shed her blouse and sagging jeans devoid of button. "Brr!" Shivering naked in the frosty air, she donned the camo suit with incredible speed, only slowing slightly when she adjusted the bra. Neptune only managed to detransform into Michiru and get rid of her makeshift bikini when the blond began pulling boots on, fully dressed. "What?" she responded to her fiends' incredulous stares. "I just got fed with going commando. Not to mention this..." She made a sweeping gesture around, pointing at the lifeless black mountain ridges covered with strips of snow. "Are you sure we aren't displaced in time? It doesn't _look_ ·like summer." She pulled her hat down.

"Absolutely," Michiru affirmed as she finished dressing.

"Then how should the winter feel here?" Rei asked, shivering.

"We'd better not know," said Haruka. "All right. Now, as everyone is ready—"

"By the way, how is Hotaru doing?" Minako asked as she adjusted her hair flowing down from under the hat.

"We discussed this with Saturn," Michiru replied, demonstrating the communicator on her wrist. "We think she should try teleporting one more time."

"Why?" asked Rei. "Isn't that too dangerous? As I understand it, she is on some Arctic island. Wouldn't it be better to evacuate her using a helicopter? Or she couldn't stay Saturn any longer?"

"There's one little complication," Haruka said. "The island... How to phrase it..."

"Is not strictly existing," Michiru finished in her stead. "We aren't sure if it has an unnoticeability spell put on it, or is it simply out of phase with reality. But its location is known as open sea."

"An uncharted island?" Rei was surprised. "It must be really tiny, then?"

"No, it's half a hundred kilometers across," Michiru corrected. "Which leaves us with only one explanation: the island is enchanted. Now, at the end of the twentieth century, even a lone rock would not be missed."

"In short," Haruka finished, "sending a helicopter would be unwise. The pilot would either find an endless expanse of waves—"

"An endless expanse of ice fields," Michiru corrected.

"..or, less probably, will attract attention to the... let's call it the less obvious side of universe. For now, all events... All visible events showing that Earth is but a part of the bigger cosmos were limited to Japan.

"We don't need," Michiru added, "the rest of the world figuring out that this concerns them as well and... _raising activity_.

"Wait!" Makoto exclaimed. "The island that doesn't exist... Could it be that place where we...? But the D point was at the Northern pole!"

"That I cannot tell," replied Haruka. "We haven't been there with you."

"It could be," Minako proclaimed. "I remember my surprise at seeing mountains on the horizon, supposedly at the Northern pole. I thought Luna mixed things up and sent us to the South pole... Why are you looking at me like this? Even a baby would remember: there's deep ocean at the North pole. No land. There's Antarctic Continent at the South pole. Ice is thick like mountain, no sea..." She cast a look across her dumbfounded comrades, then added, less sure this time: "Also, polar bears only live in Antarctic, while penguins only live near the North pole. They never meet, so drawing them next to each other is epitome of ignorance... Aint't I right?"

The girls let out a breath of relief. This was their Minako, all right. Not some impostor.

"Mina-chan," Rei lectured her. "It's penguins who live in Antarctic, the bears live in the north."

"Oh..." the blond scratched the back of her head sheepishly. "Ha-ha! Right!"

"If it is a ghost island," Makoto suggested, "could it move? Like Flying Dutchman?"

"That's a possibility," Rei agreed. "I don't see why not, when the island is enchanted so heavily it couldn't even be found."

"Then we should warn Saturn to be careful," Makoto added with worry. "Dark Kingdom lies under that place. We have ruined it thoroughly, of course, but it have been restored once when Galaxia resurrected Jadeite. Who knows if some surviving youma is hiding there."

"Of course," Haruka agreed. "We will call her."

"These boots hang loosely," Minako complained. "I'd chafe my feet. Flimsy, too."

"This is just a masquerade," Rei chastised her. "Or are you planning of running all these two hundred kilometers in civilian?"

"Oh, never mind then," Minako replied airily. "Are we far enough from the warped zone? Venus star power, Make-Up!"

The rest followed her example.

"I wonder, it happens that there are five of us," Mars noted, stomping her red shoe, which looked incongruous against the wild stone. "Exactly one sentai team."

"Mars-chan!" Venus exclaimed in exaggerated surprise. "Aren't you, by chance, offering yourself for the leading role, what with you being the red ranger and stuff?"

"Anyway!" Mars cleared her throat forcefully. "Don't you think it would be prudent to find our bearings using the map first?"

"Let's see." Uranus pulled the map from her subspace pocket. "We are here." She pointed at a thick pencil cross mark.

"Whoa." Minako leaned over her shoulder. "Boy, do these mountains stretch far... But there should be a lot of rivers around." She squinted, trying to read labels. "Hmm, everything is in English. Burugu... Byrgha... eeghalakh...? Ugh. These Russians surely have a weird language."(note 1)

"I suggest we go West first." Haruka traced her finger across the map. "Then we reach a valley that cuts through most of the mountain group, running South to North."

(シーンブレイク)

"Yes, of course... Thank you. I will be careful... Good luck traveling... Bye." Saturn closed her communicator. "So this is how it looks, the underworld entrance." The outwardly twelve-years old girl in a white and dark violet seifuku lifted her gaze towards jagged mountaintops. The dark ridge was shielding her from the low polar sun, creating general impression of menacing looming. Snow covering the closer, flatter slopes was marred with volcanic ash. "I wonder if it was fate that lead me here..."

(シーンブレイク)

After meandering a little with the lifeless valley, the five Senshi came out to a river flowing through a bigger valley. Well, calling it a river would be exaggeration: water flowed between gravel deposits covering the river-bed, at times detectable only by gurgling. But at last, there was some vegetation here. The landscape wasn't lifeless any longer. The flinty sides of the black ridges were covered with a carpet of brownish moss and creeping bushes — a thin splattering of color along the very bottom. There were even some spruces along the river, sparce and emaciated.

The valley was cutting through ridge after ridge, stretching almost exactly north to south.

"Downstream now?" Venus asked.

"No, our path lies to the south." Uranus pointed into distance, where haze was painting the black ridges deep blue. "To the north of these mountains, there lie vast swamplands. There are no cities, nor roads there. Well, at least no ones big enough to get mentioned on this map. It goes on like this right up to the Bering strait."

"Oh, then we go south," the blond agreed, envisioning herself trudging through a swamp in her orange mary janes"

(シーンブレイク)

After half an hour of intensive running they reached what was the blue-tinged faraway just a short while ago. While the Senshi can barely keep up with a race horse on a flat ground, they could move across rough terrain faster than any land animal or a vehicle: quickened reflexes — three to five times, by Mercury's estimate — plus extra balance allowing to run across gravel fields on high heels. Thanks to all this, they could run up the mountain almost as fast as on the flat ground. A good thing, too: they had to keep away from the river. The creeping bushes there were amazingly sturdy and grabby, posing a significant obstacle. No one of the five girls had high boots. They had to run along the valley sides, following all ups and downs as it cut through a perpendicular ridge after ridge.

Luckily to them, the river faded away gradually, the vegetation disappearing with it. They were surrounded again by lifeless black slopes with occasional strips of snow. Their path started climbing up. The valley kept growing smaller, then turned aside. The girls continued in a straight line: with their strength, running upwards wasn't much of a chore. They passed over a ridge, then over the next one. The next one after that was crowned with a small glacier. Scaling it included enjoying a breathtaking view from what felt like the top of the world. After that, their path started winding down. The mountains were growing smaller. Small streams emerged, flowing down their valleys. With the streamlets, the much despised vegetation returned, crawling up the slopes in brownish spots. After crossing an uncounted ridge, the girls found a wide, flat valley completely overgrown with the trice damned creeping bushes. The river was gurgling merrily southwards, but they decided unanimously to cross it perpendicularly, making a small zig-zag. Then they climbed back to the bald mountains. The mountains were low here, the valleys barely half a kilometer from ridge crest to ridge crest, meandering chaotically. The streamlets were gathering into small rivers flowing south.

The girl kept running for some twenty minutes more, cutting straight, down the slopes and up the ridges again. The mountains grew gradually even lower, becoming rounder. And becoming overgrown all over with these creeping, clingy bushes durable like steel wire.

"Let's take a break," Mars suggested after they descended into a valley covered with even thicker vegetation. The raven-haired Senshi spent the last dozen minutes trying to find a fitting expletive for the obnoxious plants, which should not be too vulgar for a Sailor Senshi. That proved to be a difficult task.

"We could simply walk for a while," suggested Neptune.

"That would make no difference," disagreed Mars. "Our Senshi forms have too high a running to walking speed ratio. As far as I remember, it's seven to twelve times. So we can stay and rest." She sat on a moss-covered boulder.

"Wait!" exclaimed Venus. "I think I heard some voices!" She pointed behind them.

"Let's go!" Jupiter replied, about to dash. But then, voices reached again, from the front this time, and more clear.

"Let's masquerade as tourists?" Neptune suggested, listening intently.

"Yes, we need to check," Uranus agreed as she detransformed into Haruka. "We can always transform, but our masquerade is better checked here, far in the wild."

"Great!" Venus exclaimed, shedding her Senshi form. "But we don't know Russian anyway."

"What could tourists be doing here?" Mars objected indignantly. She was vehemently opposed to the idea, but detransformed anyway, after the others. "In this middle of— Kyieeee!" Forgetting in the heat of discussion about this particular feature of detransforming, she found herself sitting with her bare ass on a very, _very_ ·cold boulder. The warm clothing returned, but she was already in the process of jumping to her feet.

"Which way?" The blond asked with enthusiasm.

And then, suddenly, a guy stumbled onto their group: the landscape here was so uneven that an elephant would be able to sneak up on you.

The guy, clad in grayish-green shirt and trousers of unrecognizable color tucked into dirty boots, froze at first, dumbfounded by the sight of five strangers. Then he saw cute girls behind the gray camo suits, his face blooming with a smile. He exclaimed something merry. Then she shouted something long, turning to the left.

"And how are you planning to communicate?" Rei quipped at Minako.

"Hello!" the blond shouted in proper English: the guy was standing a bit too far for a normal talk. "We are tourists!" She smiled.

"Pure genius," Rei commented, all the while inconspicuously studying the guy. He looked thin at the first glance, but his movements betrayed strength and energy. He didn't look like a tourist to her. A local, then? And who, again, had been telling that these parts were uninhabited?

Meanwhile, two middle-aged men emerged from the direction the guy was shouting in. Both carrying guns. One carried a common hunting two-barrel shotgun, another one held something akin to an over-grown assault rifle with bulky curved magazine. These two looked tense, but after seeing that they were facing girls, the men relaxed. They chastised their younger partner in a friendly manner, then talked to him in length about something. Then they kind of saluted the girls, and turned back. Have they introduced themselves? Do tell. The language wasn't sounding like anything familiar.

The guy addressed the girls, trying to explain something. Minako tried talking to him in English, but she only got something like "no yungleesh". Probably. Seeing the lack of progress, the guy started gesturing to follow him.

Seeing her friends hesitate, Rei approached the guy and started walking side to side with him. His smiles growing wider, he started telling her something non-stop. She carefully kept upwind of him. Yuck, do they ever wash in this syberia? At least once a year?

The rest of the girls, lacking a better choice, followed the two. On their way, they met the two formerly seen men busy carving some animal, their guns set aside. The men waved at the guy, grinned at the girls, and turned back to their messy business.

"I don't get it," said Makoto. "Are they tourists or hunters? These parts should be uninhabited."

"Judging by the map, there are no villages, no roads," replied Haruka. "But who could say for homesteads and dirt tracks? Our map is quite large-scale."

"Why isn't he leading us towards the river?" Minako doubted. "If he leads us to their camp, it should be at the river. It's always easier to make camp beside a river, right?"

Truly, the smiling guy led them in a roundabout route, taking to the left, away from the river. Rei kept smiling carefully in return: there was still something strange about him.

Along the way, some sort of dirty hobo jumped out of the folds of the landscape, waving his arms agitatedly. But their escort barked something fiercely, making the hobo disappear backing away and bowing deeply. The guy smiled a bit wider, commenting the event for the girls in a jovial tone.

Rei didn't see anything unusual with this: after all, she had scolded Yuichiro the same way many times, the unshaven oaf. But Minako and Michiru exchanged glances. With the latter casting a long look to the right, where the river could be glimpsed through the sparse, emaciated spruces.

The smiling guy led the girls to a campfire hidden by the bends of a small gully. There they were met by yet another man, a thick black stubble making him look like the bottom of his face was dipped into dark gray paint. Exchanging a few words with the smiling guy, he started smiling at the girls, gesturing for them to sit at the campfire.

"Well, looks like our masquerade passed the check," noted Makoto.

"Let's go then," Minako insisted unexpectedly, strangely forcefully.

"Right now?" Haruka asked in disbelief. "That would be impolite."

"Guys," Minako began airily, with a silly smile. "I think—"

"What a surprise," Rei quiped venomously. This 'dumb-blondah-style' was irritating her mightily, like waving a red cloth in front of a bull. "Since we started this, we should respond to the hospitality." She walked up to the campfire, turned around and kneeled down at a free spot, her left side to her comrades.

The unshaven man said something approving, slapping Rei on the shoulder. Too familiarly for her tastes, which made her instantly dislike him.

"Rei-chan," Minako began, in a voice usually reserved for small children. Which made the raven-haired girl grind her teeth, a wave of imprudent stubbornness rising. "You misunderstand this—"

"Nice to meet you," Rei said, not listening to her and bowing to the two men at the campfire. The language barrier is not an obstacle to acting politely. Even when you positively dislike one of your conversation partners.

"Rei-san," Michiru addressed her in a calm, serene even, voice. "We have enough evidence to suspect that our welcoming hosts are in fact a gang of illegal gold-diggers. There, at the river, they have—"

"What?" Makoto all but jumped up, looking instantly in the direction of the river. A useless gesture considering the gully side was blocking the perspective completely. "Are you serious? The Jakuza?"

"Could you be quieter?" hissed Minako. "Less obvious? I'm trying to..."

The unshaven one poured tea into an aluminum cup. Then, to Rei's shock, he poured vodka there. Then he started offering it to her insistently, all but pushing it into her hands. When she refused, he commented rudely, making the smiling guy laugh so hard he had to hold onto his sides.

"Who do you think I am!" Rei fumed, jumping to her feet. Well, trying to. The unshaven man pulled her by her arm sharply, and she plopped back into the kneeling position. The cup clattered on the rocks splashing the vodka-laced tea around.

"Rei-chan!" exclaimed Minako.

"That's it!" Rei jerked her arm free, jumping onto her feet. Backing away from the unshaven man, she pulled her henshin wand out. "Mars—"

Something pressed into her side sharply. Her danger sense blared, making her fall silent and freeze. Rei cautiously glanced to that side. The something turned out to be a sawed-off shotgun. The guy kept smiling as if nothing was happening, but his eyes were disgustingly empty now. He'd shoot without hesitation, Rei realized, growing cold. He won't ever think twice. How could she have missed this evil! But no, it was no evil. Not in the usual sense. It was attitude of a wolf towards its prey, of a man towards a meatball, so mundane and unimposing that she failed to see his true nature.

The unshaven appeared suddenly on her other side, plucking the henshin wand from her fingers. He twirled it incomprehendingly in his hand, then smirked and threw in into the fire. Like you could dispose in such a way of a powerful artifact controlling the fire element.

"We checked it, all right," Haruka said quietly, feeling guilty.

The smiling one told something to the unshaven one, who then started walking towards the four girls frozen in hesitation. He walked in an arch, to keep out of his partner's line of fire. The guy stood with his saw-off pressed firmly against Rei's side, looking past her at the girls so dispassionately it was sending chills down their spines. Rei was trying not to breathe.

"No sharp motions," Minako warned in an unusually serious voice. The silly smile looked glued onto her face.

The unshaven one started searching them unceremoniously. Haruka tried to rebel when he pawed at Michiru, but the smiling guy pressed his gun harder against Rei's side, keeping his finger on the trigger. The raven-haired girl paled. Haruka froze, feeling even more guilty and helpless. Who asked her to carry her henshin wand in the pocket, instead of subspace! The unshaven one searched her next, found it and threw it into the fire. Now there were two wands soothing over amidst the boughs cracking softly in the fire.

When they were searched, Makoto glared while Minako smiled with a fake shyness. The unshaven one reacted to both with greasy grins. Michiru kept studying him calmly. He did not find anything else. It's good that the others aren't fools like me, Haruka thought. The man squinted, studying them in return, then he started pulling Haruka's arms behind her back. She resisted by reflex, getting a hit in her solar plexus for her trouble. While she was hunched over, the man tied her hands behind her back, dragged her to the nearest tree and tied her there, all the while telling her something merrily.

And all this time the smiling guy kept looking watchfully at the other three, never taking the barrel away from Rei.

Then the unshaven one returned to the campfire. He exchanged a few words with his accomplice. The guy with the gun ordered his hostage something, and the raven-haired girl paled even more, not daring to even twitch. He pushed her with the barrel, setting direction, and led her away, finally turning his back to the rest of them. Rei cast a helpless look over her shoulder, only getting an another prod in the back in return.

The unshaven man sat down beside the campfire, and checked the pot. Then he gestured to the three girls to sit beside him, saying something in a friendly and jovial voice.

Rei and her captor disappeared beyond the gully edge.

"You asked for it!" Makoto walked up to the unshaven man, her fists clenched. "Now we'll simplytake you—"

The knife appeared in his hand so fast like he, too, had been keeping it in subspace. The man smiled a wide, disarming smile, not even bothering to stand up.

"..yourself hostage," the brunette mumbled, freezing. She had been taking some lessons from Ranma, but it wasn't enough. And they haven't covered disarming an opponent armed with a knife. A _skilled_ ·opponent armed with a knife. "Guys, act fast. There are three of us against him, even in civilian! At least transform while I hold him—"

"You are forgetting something," Michiru reminded her, walking up to the campfire and kneeling down calmly.

"Exactly," Minako agreed, following her example, still with the same glued-on silly smile. Unlike the emerald-haired woman, her calm was fake. Even Makoto could see she was high-strung, practically vibrating.

"What's wrong with you?" Makoto clenched her fists.

The snorting and suppressed laugh from behind was her answer. Then someone said something in a rude, sardonic voice. She turned around, and her heart fell. The two who have been carving their kill! They stood there, having their fun, both holding their guns in a deceptively relaxed manner. Makoto tried to assess her chances of taking on all three if she was kneeling at the campfire. She felt her heart sink even more. She turned to the other girls, searching for support. Both replied with eloquent looks: sit, now! What are they thinking! She plopped down, dimly aware of her surroundings. The two men behind her back guffawed. Then their steps began approaching.

The unshaven one lifted the aluminum cup up from the ground, wiped it with the flap of his jacket, then poured tea, added vodka, and handed it to Minako. She took it with both hands, looking into his eyes. Then she said, so breathily as if she was quoting some porn film: "Guys, we have to trick them, and quick. Rei has barely a couple minutes left."

I don't need you to explain me that, Makoto thought, glaring around frowningly. Like I don't see it myself.

(シーンブレイク)

Jagged, broken spires were rising to the height more than a kilometer. Saturn looked back over her shoulder. Behind her, steep slope was stretching down, to give way to the snowy plain of frozen ocean stretching to the horizon. But there was some sort of subtle wrongness in this picture, irritating the eyes like a movement that could only be seen with one's peripheral vision. The little girl turned back forward decisively, to stride into a cleft between two spires. The black walls grew closer, looming ponderously with sharp edges of freshly broken basalt. She was hopping lightly from rock to rock, following the meandering rift. But then there was an opening, at last.

Saturn cautiously walked up to the edge. There was a huge caldera stretching before her, its walls falling down in sharp steps. The mountain wall that circled the crater was all but disappearing in the haze, sun hanging over its much lower southern side. The girl leaned over the edge and stared down.

The water filling the crater stayed unnaturally calm, like a dark mirror, not even a crumb of ice marring its surface. It yawned like a bottomless pit. The irritating double vision returned, threefold stronger. Saturn felt like she was looking not at the lake a thousand meters below her, but into a murky, formless abyss that was both closer and deeper.

"So that's your form, Dark Kingdom," Saturn uttered quietly. "A closed pocked in reality. A trap without exit..." She closed her eyes, listening, without fear on the edge of the perilous abyss. "I hear you." She opened her eyes, reaching sideways. "I see now. The spell is shattered, but still holds strong... Maybe... Yes, I was correct. You are stuck here." Her eyes filling with determination, a halberd with curved double blade formed in her outstretched hand. "So unfair. The spell would have faded long ago, sending this island into unbeing, if not for your own suffering feeding it..." She took the halberd with both hands, twirling it a couple times as if the massive metallic weapon had the weight of a feather. Then she muttered under her breath: "Now careful, I wouldn't want to kill myself too... Well, the spell is barely holding as it is. I hope papa and mama won't learn about this..."

Holding her head high, she shouted loudly: "Hear me, Onkylons! Hear me, my compatriots who fell at the hands of Jadeite! It's time for you to go on! The Wheel of Samsara is awaiting you! So let's push all together! Let's break your chains, so that you could continue on the cycle of death and rebirth!"

She stood there listening for a few moments. Then, with a sharp motion, she brought the halberd down — as if cleaving the eerily unnatural landscape in front of her.

The heavy, oppressive silence gave way to another, perfect silence. There was no place left for the very concept of sound. Reality shuddered, then collapsed into itself, leaving an emptiness filled with a distinct feeling that there was never an island to begin with. Accompanied by what felt like thousands of released spirits sighing in relief, the caldera ceased to be.

"I did it," the girl said with relief, letting her halberd disappear. The power of Silence, even a small fraction of it, was not to be trifled with. Saturn had been risking when she called forth the final purification, after which there should be no one left alive, be they a man or an alien god. Including her, who initiated The End of Everything. It wasn't intended to be used like this, at a thousandth of its true power. But she did it. The island was no more, while Saturn was still alive and well, and...

The sound returned, with a barely audible whisper of wind driving occasional ice sheet across the waves.

A kilometer below her feet.

Saturn yelped, regaining her weight. The onrushing air pushed resiliently against her face, growing stronger. Her tiny skirt lifted up, fluttering, her short hair streaming up. Saturn panicked, twisting awkwardly. But all she achieved was that she was falling head-first now, the long ribbons of her back bow fluttering like a comet tail. Her hair was getting in her eyes, obscuring her vision.

"Mommyeeeeee!" A seahawk passing by jerked away from the floundering figure that onrushed suddenly from above, to recede then as quickly bellow, leaving a shriek trail. The bird stared after the strange human. Was it seeing things...? Well, anyway, the irritating feeling that always followed it in this part of the sea was gone at last.

(シーンブレイク)

Things went wrong right from the start. One of the bandits, the man with a strange shotgun resembling an assault rifle, didn't sit at the campfire. The bastard remained standing behind their backs, controlling the situation.

Makoto had been hoping at first that the plan — whatever Minako and Michiru had, a joint one or two separate ones — took this possibility into account. But all too soon, her hopes have been dashed. The two bandits sitting at the fire started forcefully pumping the three girls full of tea laced with vodka. While drinking very litte themselves. The one with the double-barreled shotgun was sitting between Michiru and Minako, the gun slung on his back.

Makoto was drinking through gnashed teeth, her attention straining in search for some avenue of escape. But it was in vain. The standing bandit wasn't relaxing, he wasn't even conversing with his two accomplices at the fire. Unable to see him, Makoto wasn't risking to glance back. But Minako's eyes jumping in that direction often told her everything. There was no window of opportunity.

And Rei was out there, alone against that fourth one with empty eyes.

The unshaven one began pouring more, but the bottle ran empty. Makoto felt a surge of hope, but that hope died an untimely death when the man turned around to fish an another bottle out of his backpack. There was a lot of such bottles... Time was rapidly running out, an escape was nowhere in sight. The bandit with a strange shotgun kept standing watchfully, fully in control. Her head was beginning to swim, Makoto had never drank more than a saucer of sake when tradition required. But the awareness of her every movement being noticed wasn't losing its sharpness. She cast a side glance at Michiru. The emerald haired girl was sitting serenely, only her cheeks becoming slightly pink. She didn't react at Makoto's desperate look at all. That was some self-control. But did she have a plan?

Makoto shifted her gaze to the other side. Minako wasn't even trying to slow the process of alcoholizing, or to sabotage it. Her face reddened, her eyes askew, she was giggling stupidly in respond to the double-barrel shotgun wearing bandit's dirty — judging by his tone — hints. She didn't even show disgust when he moved closer, looming over her. Makoto felt nauseated. Had that girl cooked already? Minako was swaying even while kneeling. The double-barreled shotgun wearing bandit poured her pure vodka, without tea. A finishing strike. The blond gulped it brazenly. Then she bent over in a coughing fit, the aluminum cup falling from her fingers. But nobody was sparing vodka here. The bandits laughed roughly. The unshaven one shoved the next cup into Makoto's hands, his eyes telling her to drink, or else. She lifted the cup to her lips slowly, buying seconds. She wasn't even aware if it was tea in there, or pure vodka. The situation stank. A few more seconds and she'd have to fight. What had these two fools been waiting for? Makoto somehow forgot how lost she was when they have been surrounded from behind.

Minako lost her coordination and fell backwards, landing on her elbows. Her legs slipped apart, and she froze in this provocative pose, giggling weakly. The shotgun wearing bandit leaned over her. Makoto felt her gut twisting in revulsion. It was time!

"Ve.. venus.. hic.. star power, m-make up," Minako whispered, slurring, as she looked with a smile into the eyes of the unwashed muzzle looming over her and stinking of unwashed teeth.

And then there was a silent golden flash.

The three bandits recoiled, covering their eyes with their elbows. The flash probably looked shockingly blinding to them. Venus pushed the man away, making him tumble head over heels, to slide away from the fire. The blond Senshi in an orange skirt stood up, swaying and shaking her head. She was like a bright spot of sunlight and hope, like a color added to this gray and dreary landscape.

"L-lowly, dasht'rdly villainsh... hic.. Shaira... hic... Venus, the sholdier of Love and Beauty, won't forgive you such violashan... hic..."

And she was plastered.

The sailor-suited warrior stumbled on a flat ground, barely managing to hold her balance. The watchman recovered from shock, and pointed his strange shotgun at her. The unshaven one produced a knife.

Hoping dearly that alcohol haven't muddled her coordination yet, Makoto rolled to the right from the sitting position, stopping at the gunman's feet. He started lowering his weapon, but she reared up, grabbing at the barrel with both her hands. The bandit was stronger, but she hadn't been taking the lessons from Ranma for nothing. Pushing her shoulder into his armpit, the brunette heaved and threw him over her shoulder. The bandit was slammed back-first onto the ground, his feet landing in fire. But he managed to keep a firm grip on the gun, and started kicking furiously, trying to wrench it free. Being jerked left and right, all Makoto could do was twisting away from the barrel pointing at the gloomy sky.

Michiru wasn't wasting time either. Dropping backwards, she pushed with her hands against the ground, to uncoil like a spring and slam her heels into the back of the unshaven one's head. While he was busy standing up, orienting himself and deciding which of the girls posed bigger threat, she managed to jump onto her feet and run behind Makoto as she sang "Neptune star power, Make-up!"

"Hurry!" Makoto shouted, struggling with her last strength against the surprisingly strong opponent. "We'll deal with it here. Save—"

A shot rang resoundingly from beyond the gully edge.

"—Rei..." Makoto finished mechanically, her voice crestfallen. "Rei...! Run, save her! Maybe it's still not too late!"

But Neptune froze, all her attention captured by something at the direction where Rei has been escorted. Like she was listening to something.

"Take you, evildoer, for example," Venus addressed the unshaven one. Her drunken haughtiness would be funny in different circumstances.

The unshaven one wasn't inclined to listen. He rushed Venus with his knife. The Senshi was quick to demonstrate that being drunk posed no obstacle for her mastery. On pure reflexes, she caught his arm. She didn't know her strength, though. The arm crunched, breaking. The unshaven one let out a howl that was cut abruptly as she kicked him away, to lie down beside his friend with the double-barreled shotgun.

Yet another shot rang from the direction Rei has been escorted to!

"Come on, go‼！" Makoto yelled at Neptune who was standing still as a statue. Her attention diverted, her grip slipped.

The bandit tore his weird shotgun free from her hands, with the same motion slamming its butt into Makoto's head. Her vision swam, exploding with half light, half pain. The world around her doubled. The man shot at Neptune from the hip. The emerald haired Senshi recoiled, turning to face him as she grabbed at her side that was stained red. He shot again, and again, some five times, carving her torso with buckshot until she fell, bleeding out, and did not rise again.

Trying to rise up, Makoto looked in horror at her comrade's blood soaked body. Haruka's anguished screams were reaching her muted, from far away.

"Hic.. Venus... howizzat... Love-me— Ouch!" Venus turned slowly, surprised, to the bandit holding the double-barreled shotgun. She was reacting with disbelief at his gall to interrupt her technique with a shot.

Makoto's heart fell. The last hope...

"Bird shot?" An unsteady white-glowed hand wiped at the small pellets, most of which didn't even manage to penetrate the fabric of the leotard. Venus stared at the bandit with indignation. He stood frozen in shock. The orange-skirted girl put her hands at her hips. "Who are you.. hic.. taking me for? A duck?"

While she was standing there, swaying, the bandit recovered from shock. And used the second barrel, this one loaded with buckshot. The white fabric of the sailor fuku was stained red.

"That's.. hic.. much better," Venus approved before falling onto her back.

Makoto was about to bolt, but found a gun point looking her in the eyes.

It was over. Rei killed, Venus shot, Neptune bleeding out, Haruka tied firmly, unable to do anything in time... Makoto blinked with effort. Her mind was all muddled, the death looking her in the eyes was blurring and doubling. What choice to make? A suicidal charge where her head would be smeared across the gully right at her first move? The bandits looked angry, their looks promising nothing but pain. Take the easy death now? Or stall for time, and suffer demons know what sorts of torture for a phantom hope of helping Haruka?

The bandits started talking with each other, their voices laden with anger and apprehension. Of course, they still had no idea what had just happened. The unshaven one stood up with moaning and cussing. The one with the double-barreled shotgun replaced it behind his back to start making a split for his accomplice's arm, hastily and awkwardly. Maybe they'd lose their focus, Makoto thought. But no, the gun point aimed at her head didn't even twitch. She shifted her gaze to the face of the bandit aiming at her. His eyes narrowed, and she read her death sentence in them. If these girls were so dangerous, there was no sense leaving the last of them alive. The finger resting on the trigger tensed...

A dash of fire speared the repeater shotgun, tearing a molten hole in its barrel. The bandit recoiled with a shout as he dropped the destroyed weapon. Makoto turned her head in the direction he was facing.

Sailor Mars was standing on the gully edge, her eyes narrowed dangerously. She was notching a second arrow of solid flame with her bow of fire. Flame was flickering around her, ruffling her white skirt with a red rim and making her hair float. A white skirt, not red! It looked similar to Sailor Moon's in her Super form and to Sailor Sol's. There was a pair of flickering wings of fire behind her back.

"Mars! You are alive!" Makoto shouted in joy, struggling to stand up and succeeding.

Then she met the eyes of this vision haloed in red, and Makoto's heart skipped a beat. Instead of pupils, these eyes had openings into an abyss filled with furious, all-consuming flame.

The now gun-less bandit came to his senses. He cast a fleetingly fast side glance at Makoto. Then he started pawing frantically at his knife, fumbling as it caught on something in his hurry. Even with her head all mucked up, the brunette caught on his intention quickly. He needed a hostage badly: those other two were out of the game, as one had his arm broken while the another had his rifle behind his back.

"Oh no, you won't! Jupiter Star Power, Make-Up! Supreme Thunder!"

The bandit flopped to the ground, twitching and smoking, to meditate on effects of high voltage on human body.

"Ow," Venus voiced, rolling into a sitting position. "It hurts, you know." She sounded mostly sober now. "Venus love-me chain." A chain of golden hearts whipped out, tying the two remaining bandits up. And with this, the battle was over.

Neptune groaned, showing signs of life. Jupiter rushed to help the wounded comrade. Only to find, to her relief, that the wounds were all shallow. Buckshot penetrated the emerald-haired Senshi's skin, but went no deeper than half an inch, resulting in a dramatic bleeding, but doing no critical damage. The healing magic was already at work, the foreign objects being pushed out or vanished. Even the blood-soaked suit had recovered to merely blood-stained even if all the holes remained.

Mars hurried to untie Haruka. Venus walked up to the fire, while still keeping her chain taut. Digging through the scattered coals, she fished out two henshin wands... And stared at Mars. Then at the raven-haired comrade's wand that looked strangely lifeless. She looked again at the Senshi clad in a changed sailor suit.

Untied, Haruka hurried to grab her wand and transform, to stop posing a weak link. Uranus hurried to care of Neptune. The emeral-haired young woman was recovering quickly, so Jupiter went to help Venus tie the bandits up. The fog and pain in her head were fading, as well as the scars on her psyche left by the altercation. Jupiter accepted both kinds of healing as the right thing. She dragged the singed one — she wasn't feeling like calling the thing a man — by his foot to the others. Rummaging through their backpack, she found a rope. Then she tied them up and to each other. She wasn't feeling inclined to show much care. The moans of the unshaven one, whose broken arm she had disturbed, didn't touch her. Venus banished the chain.

Mars walked up to them, burning the prisoners with the expressionless look of her flaming eyes. Then Neptune hobbled up, Uranus supporting her.

"Where's that one, who—" Jupiter began but was silenced by Neptune who held her by the arm and shook her head. "Ah." Jupiter cast a cautious side glance at Mars who was standing still like a statue. The bandits were beginning to quake in fear under the steady, expressionless gaze of the mistress of fire. Jupiter imagined a charred body lying out there. She felt fear for her friend.

The tense moment was broken by a dirty woolen cap peeking out from beyond the gully edge, then jerking back down.

"Here come the slaves, at last," Venus commented as if it was something obvious.

"Slaves?" Uranus repeated.

"But of course," explained Venus. "You don't think, these would wash for gold by themselves?" She prodded the tied up bandits with her orange shoe. "They're like the Dark Agency, the mafia and the like. They grab people, turn them into their slaves and make them do their dirty work for them. The only difference is that our usual adversaries were doing it with magic, while these ones... I don't want to know." She turned around to look at a whole row of dirty hats, that hid immediately under her gaze. "If there were guys in our place, they'd start turning them into slaves. While us... Yeech, why do we have such a bad luck, running into the most disgusting things lately?" Turning around sharply, she strode away down the gulley. "Let's get out of here."

"What, will we just leave these bastards?" Uranus asked with surprise.

"We don't have to drag them ourselves." Venus looked away from the tied up enemies in disgust. "There are these guys." She pointed at the dirty figures in tattered clothing who were peeking from beyond the edge warily.

"I'm not sure they are up to the task," Neptune drawled with doubt. Under her calm, studying gaze the row of worn woolen hats dove disorderly, disappearing from view.

"Well, they have to feel some gratitude for the rescue," suggested Jupiter.

"Fine, it means nothing holds us here then," Uranus agreed, eager to leave the unpleasant reminders behind.

"All right," Venus agreed. Then she turned towards where the former slaves were huddling, and shouted: "Hey you, unwashed lot! Grab your slavers and drag them to the police, wherever you have it here!" After which she commented under her breath: "Not that you could understand me, but maybe you'll get it."

Then, without further words, the Senshi leaped away, and were gone in an instant.

Silence descended upon the wooded tundra.

Then, a dirty hat rose over the gully edge. Finally sure that the supernatural beings were gone but still jumping at each tiniest noise, a slave sneaked up to the hog-tied masters. He dropped to his knees next to them, shaking...

And he started untying.

Ten minutes later, the anger had been vented with slave slapping, the remaining gun was reloaded and the broken arm put in a proper split. The slaves were whipped into working like crazy. Everything was back as it should be. The missing Chika was promptly forgotten: there was more trouble than use from that psycho maniac anyway.

(シーンブレイク)

"This is getting me nowhere." Sailor Saturn sighed as she leaned over the railing running along the bridge roof. The immense ship painted deep orange was shuddering softly as it tore its way North through thick ice sheets.

She had been glad at first, just to be alive and safe, and in presence of people, even if those tourists on the deck below haven't noticed her. She just stood here, at the top, watching mindlessly as occasional groups of old ladies or gentleman walked along the deck taking the scenery, listening them talking in many languages. The plain of snow and ice breaking continually under the ship's massive, rounded prow, to disappear in the dark waters, or emerge back as huge chunks of greenish ice, washed clean, glistening with sharp edges, only to disappear again under the wide vessel's sides... One could watch it endlessly, like watching fire. For her, there was even more. The subtle flow and ebb of many life force sources below, there were much more people inside. The steady burn of contained nuclear power even deeper down. Saturn couldn't help but deliberately lose herself in all of this.

But everything comes to an end. The tourists grew bored and disappeared inside. The snowy plain was feeling more and more monotonous. The girl wasn't planning to visit the North Pole, after all. She was needed elsewhere, preferably where her parents were worrying over her right now.

With heavy heart and a healthy dose of apprehension, Saturn teleported again.

(シーンブレイク)

The girls barely left the scene when they had to stop: Neptune was too weak yet to keep up with them, all her energy expended on healing. She needed time to recover.

Using the lull, Jupiter addressed Mars, who still hadn't spoken a word: "Mars-chan... are you all right?"

Mars stood there with her head lowered. The wings of fire have long since faded, along with the aura of flickering flames. But the changes to the uniform still stood out. More worrying still was the change in behavior.

"Here's your henshin wand," Venus said, holding the mentioned item out. "How did you transform... without it...?"

"I..." Mars took the wand, lifting it to the eye level. Her eyes were normal again, black irises with purplish highlights. Now, at close examination, the wand looked dead, grayed. And not due to sooth. "It's like I broke a limit," she admitted finally. "I'm afraid..." The wand began to dull. The star topping it, with the symbol of Mars inside, turned milky, opaque. Then it lost its shine, becoming coarse like sandstone. "I'm afraid, I have no way back." The wand cracked, and crumbled to dust. The four soldiers looked at their fiend in horror.

"Mars-chan, you cannot detransform now?" Jupiter whispered. No, she was aware that they have already lost all hope for peaceful life. But this one was too cruel.

"Try in anyway!" Venus insisted. "Come on! I know you can do it!"

"I..." Mars frowned, then grabbed the stone at her breast with one hand. This heart-shaped jewel, the focus of their Senshi magic, was an essential attribute, remaining in that same place in all seifuku variations. Even Sailor Starlights with their bikinis of black leather had it there.

Everyone tensed in anticipation. A minute passed, then another one. Mars was standing still, her eyes closed. Then, there was a ripple that changed her suit. The skirt became uniformly red, the white flame-shaped shoulder-pads faded back into sets of purple rings hugging her shoulders. Mars frowned, creasing her forehead, her eyes still closed. Finally, she banished her uniform making it disperse in fiery sparks.

The girls let out a breath of great relief. A nude Rei stood still for several seconds, her eyes closed, a hand clutched at her chest. Then her civilian clothing returned, materializing around her like a mirage gaining tangibility.

"Rei-chan," Venus breathed out: the raven-haired shrine maiden was clad in camou pants and a bra. There was no trace of her blouse, nor of the camou jacket.

"It's.. all there," Rei managed tensely.

"I'll bring it!" Jupiter volunteered hastily. She was apprehensive of what she would see there. She dashed, approximating the line along which that... subhuman had been escorting Rei. In the next gully there was a burned, still smoking patch of ground. She slowed involuntarily... There was no charred body, only crumbling remains of a burned skeleton amidst the ground burned to ash. A shapeless lump of metal lying by its side was still crackling as it was cooling down.

Jupiter swallowed as she picked the blouse and jacket up. Thank the gods, the buttons were intact, not torn. A sleeve was singed slightly by the grass smoldering at the spot edge.

Worrying for her friend, Jupiter banished the crumbling remains of a monster from her mind as she hurried back.

(シーンブレイク)

It was dark here. Stars were shining brightly in the clear tropical sky. Saturn stumbled. A plain of uneven rock was stretching in all directions, disappearing in the darkness of a moonless night. There were bright lights on the horizon, though, drowning out stars in that direction. The air was warm and smelled like sea.

"I think I can make my way from here," the diminutive Senshi decided, and detransformed. "Now, if I reach these lights—"

Hotaru stumbled again, falling to her arms and knees. The ragged rock bit into her knee, crumbling sharply under her fingers. It was nigh impossible to walk here, more so after the loss of night vision provided by the Senshi form.

"Perharps detransforming was too hasty a decision," the girl admitted to herself, rubbing at her scraped knee.

(シーンブレイク)

The Senshi were running south at a slow pace, for a half hour now. The mountains became even rounder, covered in a true fir forest. It posed a significant obstacle to running full-tilt. Mars had grown tired quickly of the care and compassion they had been trying to smother her in. Snapping out of her brooding, she began sniping in return. Venus and Jupiter felt relieved: their old friend Sailor Mars was back. In a skirt that was uniformly red, that she could summon using her willpower alone, without any wand.

When, by their estimate, there were a few tens of kilometers left till the highway, the girls stumbled onto something one could call a road — given a lot of imagination. There was a wide stripe where bare gravel interspersed with dirt cut with deep truck tracks. This stripe was stretching, meandering along a mid-sized river. The sailor-suited warriors could jump over the water barrier with some effort, but not where they currently stood as the river was wider here.

They thought at first to cross the river and continue in a straight line, but everyone had enough slaloming between fir trees: there were the constant tension, the needles falling down your collar, and other such things. While the road was, probably, leading towards the highway. As far as they could find their position on the map, this river was crossing it. If they go along the road upstream, they'll come to the highway sooner or later.

The girls set off down the road. The tentatively beaten track was stretching along the valley in a relatively straight line, sometimes coming to the very shore and sometimes receding far away from the meandering river. There were no trees, so the girls were running fast, the chunks of coarse gravel posing only a minor inconvenience. Venus was beginning to wonder if they stumble onto any villages when a ford emerged from behind a bend in the road. In the middle of the ford, there was a truck.

The girls pulled back into the cover provided by the sparse forest.

The kind-of-road was making a sharp right turn here, to continue on the other side of the river. The semi-trailer truck sat in the middle of the ford, its open trailer platform mostly empty. The dull green vehicle was standing slightly askew, deeper than up its belly so that the wheels weren't visible. The silence was only being disturbed with the quiet noise of the flowing water, swearing in an unknown language and metallic clanging. At closer inspection, there were two men on the truck, hanging precariously to the sides of the open hood.

"Let's help them," suggested Uranus.

"Somehow, I don't feel like socializing with locals," Venus objected, playing the uncharacteristic role of skeptic this time.

"The Senshi's purpose is to help people," Uranus said, looking at the two with compassion as they pulled on something. The engine emitted a couple pitiful sounds, then there was silence again. The two unlucky fellows uttered some heart-felt words, their voices laden with hopelessness. After that, they climbed to the top of of the cab to sit there, looking along the road, one facing forward and the other facing back.

"Let's push it out, at least," Uranus repeated. "They'd have to sit there forever until someone drives by.

"We'd have to reveal our nature," Venus reminded her. "How else could we move that thing in the icy water."

"Just one more vague legend," Neptune disagreed. "In a faraway land. It's even better that way, more information noise."

They waited for several more minutes. The silence was all-encompassing, the quiet noise of the river was only making it deeper.

"There's no sense waiting," said Mars. She marched out to the shore, tall and proud. The men on the cab roof noticed her, seemingly falling into a state of light befuddlement. Mars entered the water and began trudging cautiously towards the car. She was at times staggering on the rocks invisible under water. Gradually, water reached her waist and the flow started dragging her along: the super strength was of no help where balance was needed. She had to lean sideways against the flow, so far that her left shoulder submerged. She continued walking in this manner.

"Not to sound like a simpleton," Jupiter said, shivering from the sight alone, "but how good is our protection against icy water? There were no occasions to check."

They only had two occasions where they had to swim in their Senshi forms. Both times it was in summer.

Venus walked up to the shore and tested the water with one foot. Her shoes, being barely-there constructs of a toe-cap, a heel and an ankle strap, provided virtually no cover for her feet.

"Unpleasant, but tolerable," the blond commented before stepping into the river herself. As she waded waist-deep, the flow started dragging her too. "Brr... Ah, enough of this. If I have to get soaked I may as well do it properly!" Venus dove to continue swimming using butterfly stroke, creating foamy waves with each powerful stroke.

Others followed them, reaching the truck quickly by swimming. Mars was the last one to get there, but at least her head stayed dry. This was of little help as the mane of raven hair was soaked, sticking to her shoulders and undulating slowly, caressed by the flow.

The men on the cab were asking something with worry. They were probably afraid that such beauties could catch cold, get fever and die.

"Everything is all right, dudes!" Venus shouted addressing them in English. Then she turned to her comrades, and continued in Japanese: "What part should we pull by?"

"I found a wheel," Jupiter commented after diving under the truck to get to the left of it, upstream. "Should I push it, or roll it?"

"There's a couple of hooks at the front," Uranus noted while groping blindly, crouched so she was up to her neck. "The bumper feels sturdy enough as well."

Three of them stood in front, to pull at the bumper. Jupiter was rolling the front left wheel and Mars pushing at the bumper from the right side. The girls strained, groaning in many voices. The vehicle jerked, the men transiting from the mild stage of befuddlement to a medium one. The collective effort raised the nose of the truck into the air, but that was all.

"It won't work this way!" shouted Uranus. "Let's two of us push at the back wheels, and two more at the trailer.

They changed positions, only Mars remained pushing at the bumper from the right.

"It's strangely deeper here," Jupiter commented at a back wheel.

They strained, crouching, diving fully into the water, pushing at the wheels with effort, grabbing at the prominent protector. The truck shuddered, bobbed, then it tore out of the deep holes it dug with its back wheels. The back back axle had been sitting up to the axle in the river bottom, it turned out. After that, it was much easier. The girls rolled the vehicle onto the shore without too much effort, continuing for a little longer along the dirt and road bumps. Until the truck jumped on yet another bump, after which Jupiter stepped on something that said "ow".

"Guys!" She stopped pushing immediately, jumping aside. "There's some— Ah. Ouchie." She winced in sympathy.

The empty trailer jumped on a bump next, followed by Venus also stepping on something that said "ow".

"What was that?" The blond turned around. "Erm, oops?" She scratched at the back of her head sheepishly. "We, like, didn't want to."

"Ah," Neptune covered her mouth with a hand when she walked up to them.

"Yeah, that's definitely ow," Uranus commented with sympathy.

"Mghm," Mars groaned, quashed into the dirty track. Her hair was a mess, the only clean parts of her were her arms, sticking to the sides at awkward angles.

"Let me help you!" Jupiter tore her free from the dirt with a loud splorching sound.

"Not a word!" Mars insisted, wiping at her eyes with the back of her wrist. From the front, she was the uniform color of dirt. From the back, her legs and backside bore clear imprint of protector from the double tires. "Go on, arrange for a hitch-hike if they go in the right direction. If they can make it run... I'll be back soon. But if I ever hear about this from anyone..." she finished threateningly. Then she strode towards the river, her head held high.

(シーンブレイク)

It was getting dark. The truck was crawling across dirt roads for hours now, swaying and jumping. The highway was nowhere in sight. There hadn't been no population center either. The road had branched several times, but so far the only signs of life were a couple trucks they saw pulling their cargo from the opposite direction.

The girls could only sit in the dirty trailer in the company of two empty, rattling barrels. Or admire the scenery. The smooth mountains covered with forest were really beautiful here, but even the nature's beauty grows boring after a while.

"We should have ran on our own," Venus stated. "We can't even take a nap while it keeps flapping us around like socks in a washer."

"Well, in hindsight that seems like a better idea," Uranus agreed. "But then again, if these guys go in the right direction, we don't have to stand catching a ride on the highway. These ones are already grateful to us, but you never know what sort of person you'd meet."

"It's all well and good only if they plan to go out to the highway at all," grumbled Venus. "And if they go in the right direction. Too many 'if's."

Jupiter cast a sidelong look at Mars, who was sitting with her back against the side, her head hanging down. Jupiter didn't dare disturbing her.

(シーンブレイク)

The pile of Senshi was waking slowly, with groaning, stretching and questioning whose body part squeezed what of whom. Finally, they managed to untangle themselves and took a look around. They had no idea how they managed to fall asleep yesterday in the swaying trailer platform, using each other as pillows.

The truck was parked amidst a dusty lot paved with asphalt. The engine was off. To one side, there was an expanse of shoddy factory buildings, some iron and concrete sheds, parked trucks and rusting, partly disassembled trucks. To the other side, after a strip of wild bushes, there was a bay nested between rolling hills. Both far sides of the bay were sporting a few docking cranes.

"Where did they bring us?" asked Jupiter.

Silence was her answer.

"They made themselves scare," Venus stated after peeking into the cabin. "It's empty." She jumped down to he ground.

The Senshi jumped down from the trailer platform. Uranus pulled the map out and tried to determine their position.

"Looks like there are only two bays like this," noted Jupiter. "We only have to find near which one are we now."

"If it's this one," Venus injected, pointing at the map, "then there should be a town beginning from the very shore. The one with the airport that Ami marked for us." She pointed at a thick pencil check mark on the map.

"It's hard to tell by this map," Neptune said doubtfully, "but an airport needs on the order of three kilometers for its runway. But this entire town is no more than two kilometers across. If the airport is somewhere around here, it must be noticeably removed from the town."

"Anyway, first we have to find where we are," Venus summed up with an unhealthy enthusiasm. "Maybe we got lost, at last?" There was an unhealthy, adventuring gleam in her eye.

Somewhere in the depth of forbidden forests at the foothills of Mt. Fuji, a piglet sneezed sadly.

"You haven't had enough adventures yet?" Jupiter asked disbelievingly.

"I know I'm asking much," Mars said in a deliberately even voice. "But let's go into the town in civilian."

"Hokey-dokey." Venus glanced around to be sure no one was watching, and dropped her guise, becoming Minako.

Mars nodded, and did the same, becoming Rei. This time everything worked as normal, without delays.

"Why not?" Neptune shrugged, then detransformed into Michiru.

But Jupiter and Uranus weren't too keen on the idea.

"Come on," Minako tried to reassure them. "We have a secret weapon in store. Right, Rei-chan?" She reached out to slap the other girl on the shoulder, but froze in indecision.

A tiny lick of flame was flickering above Rei's raised finger like it was a candle.

"Whoa," Minako only managed, dumbfounded.

"The limit is broken," the raven-haired girl intoned in a dull monotone, like a prophet. "The line between Sailor Mars and Hino Rei is no longer distinct. I feel..." She fell silent, focused inward. "In time, the difference will fade completely. All my transformation will be doing is summoning the official uniform."

"I recall," Michiru added thoughtfully, "Ami telling me about her theory that the henshin wands are training tools. And when we master our powers, we don't need them anymore."

"Training tools, you say," drawled Rei. "Ouch, it's hot!" She flapped her hand, extinguishing the tiny flame.

"More like limiters," Uranus said.

"Mmm." Minako took a comically exaggerated thinking pose. "It's fine." She patted Rei on the shoulder. "What's so bad if you think of it?" She rolled her eyes dreamily.

"Mina," Makoto was quick to bring her back to earth. "If you think about reaching the top as a sports star, forget it. That's dishonorable like doping."

"Spoilsport." The blonde pouted, starting to walk to the right along the shore. There were houses visible there.

"All right, all right." Jupiter gave up. "If you itch for extra adventures so badly..." Turning back into Makoto, she followed them.

The last to shed her Senshi form was Uranus. She did it with extreme reluctance. The desire to shield her loved one from harm was overpowering.

There were blocks of one-story housed stretching up the hill. The plots weren't just big, but giant in the eyes of citizens of the crowded Tokyo. The unusually wide street was composed from packed dirt and gravel.

Minako kept looking around with curiosity, comparing. Rei was mimicking her, obviously trying to distract herself from thinking about the eternity ahead.

Plank fences were stretching at both sides of the street, some tentatively painted while others the silvery gray color of weathered wood. The overall look of the tin-roofed houses, the nettles along the road edge, the beaten paths instead of sidewalks — it all felt not just like a village, but like deep backwater where the light of civilization doesn't reach.

"Such small windows," Minako noted.

"What did you expect?" Rei replied. "Winters are dire in these parts."

"Is this really a town?" Haruka injected with doubt as she glanced at a rickety fence to her side. There were rows of cabbage beyond it.

All her doubts were gone when the girl finally ascended the hill, to find themselves among paved roads and multistory buildings.

"It's so... spacious," Rei voiced their mutual feeling as she looked around.

Long, five-storied buildings were stretching along the unbelievably wide streets. The traffic area was only two lanes per direction. It had been designed by hopeless optimists, judging by the extremely rarified traffic. But it was separated from the wide sidewalk by even wider lawns. A luxury, a merciless waste of space by the standards of Tokyo where, on the narrower streets, the sidewalk was presented with a half-meter wide strip delineated with a white line. But that wasn't all. There was one more lawn, even wider, between the sidewalk and the buildings. In places it was overgrown with trees, like a small forest.

"It's so open!" approved Minako. The rolling hills, visible through the gaps in the buildings, were giving the open space a volume and a sense of scale. The bay behind, stretching into the lead-gray expanse of ocean, was adding to the overall impression.

"It's all shoddy, though," Makoto said. "And the locals look poor."

The houses were flaking paint, the lawns were unkempt expanses of wild grass. The rare passers by wore clothing that was not as much poor as old-fashioned and dull.

"It's a good thing we had detransformed," agreed Michiru.

The Japanese girls in gray camou suits were standing out, of course. But not that much: the overall atmosphere was bleak.

"What else would you expect." Rei shrugged. "They had a whole communism collapse on them. With everything else for company."

"Hey, look, they have their own Tokyo tower! Over there!" Minako enthused, pointing down the street where a familiar shape towered, painted red and white.

After a short walk of couple blocks, they reached a square where the structure towered. They found it to be relatively small.

"Well, I suppose for a town this small, a fifty-meter one is about the right size," Rei noted.

The tower looked impressive compared to the five-storied buildings surrounding it, but that was all. The vague replica of the Tokyo tower was standing on its legs looking too thin amidst a grassy bump closer to one end of the rectangular square.

"Here's the end of the town," Jupiter noted. Beyond the square, the street was diving downhill. The far panorama that was rising beyond consisted of rolling, forested hills

"We barely walked one kilometer," Rei said with worry. "There's no room to fit an airport."

"I haven't seen any planes overhead," Haruka consented. "Maybe we are mistaken, and this is some other town?" She opened the map as she walked.

"Or we have entered it from the wrong end," Michiru noted.

"Let's ask the locals," suggested Makoto. "Someone is bound to know English, right?"

But the infrequent passers by were either shrugging uncomprehendingly or hastening their steps to avoid the girls in gray camou suits.

"Should we stop a car?" Rei mused aloud, looking at the cars driving by infrequently along the streets and traffic circles of the square.

"Oh! Let's ask these young men!" Minako perked up.

"Mina-chan, wait—" Makoto sighed heavily, seeing the blonde not listening to her. "You better not."

Meanwhile, Minako was walking towards a group of three young men. Shaven-headed, wearing jackets of black leather, they were shouting something, waving with placards and a red flag. There were words written on the placards, meaning... something.

"The local script is simply irritating," Rei commented after she tried reflexively to read he placards. As with the street nameplates before, the result proved to be discouraging. Half the letters seemed to be the usual Latin, while the other half were either totally incomprehensible or vaguely similar to the Greek alphabet every school student knew thanks to the physics and math. That's not counting that stupid backwards "R" of theirs. Any attempt at reading this mess was producing a hellish, discordant mix of sounds.

"Will she be all right?" Makoto asked with worry as she watched her friend carefreely approach the three whose attitude was far from peaceful. The passers by were giving them a wide berth.

"Don't worry," Rei reassured her. "She's very good at running."

At this moment, a truck braked with a screech, coming to a stop a bit further along the sidewalk. Men in gray camou suits and black face masks under round green helmets started pouring predatorily from a door that opened in the iron box of truck body. Soldiers?

The skin-headed young men went into a frenzy, shouting and waving with triple vigor.

"Come on, turn back already," Makoto mumbled under her breath, trying to develop telepathy on the fly to convey this simple idea to Minako.

"At least it's something comprehensible," Rei added with relief after she saw a clear and obvious letters "OMOH" on the side of the truck.

A dozed camou-suited men, their faces hidden by black masks, stopped in confusion. There was a clear "and that's all?" in their poses. It seems they were looking at the rowdy three with an open disappointment. Some tried to look around the square. But there was no one beside the three skinheads, the five foreign girls and scarce passers by who were now trying even harder to be somewhere else as soon as possible. The camou-suited men drooped in disappointment, bickering lazily with someone in the cab. Some started taking more relaxed stances, leaning against their truck with a bored look.

"Back," Makoto telepathed to the blond. "Go back."

"Hi!" Minako addressed the young men loudly in English. "Could you tell me where is the airport?"

The skinheads froze, blinking in confusion.

The camou-suited men tensed, confused.

Makoto face-palmed, not wanting to believe her eyes.

Minako smiled disarmingly.

The skinheads exploded with aggressive shouts. They started advancing on the blond in a wedge formation.

"No, you got me wrong," Minako tried to placate them, backpedaling. "I have nothing against communism! Gorbachev! Perestroika!"

The skinheads roared, then rushed her. Minako yelped, barely managing to dodge. She started fleeing. Then she yelped again, flying much faster: the red flag slamming against her spine gave her a good acceleration.

"Mina-chan," Makoto said with a sigh.

"Waah!" Minako was yelling, mixing English with Japanese. "Help, I'm being killed! Communists-dono, you got me wrong! Somebody, help! Mommy!"

The camou-suited men joined the action gleefully, rushing after the skinheads as one.

The hollering Minako realized in the last possible moment that she was leading the chase right at her comrades. She turned sharply to the right, running out to the square across the lanes. Traffic was so scarce that no one even had to brake. There were two traffic rings on the square paved uniformly with asphalt. One had a grassy bump with the tower in its center, the other had its center occupied with parked cars. Minako started running down this second traffic ring, around the parked cars.

Under the unbelieving stares of the four girls, the chase made a full circle. A car heading towards the traffic circle stopped abruptly, tires squealing. A blond girl in a gray camou suit ran in front of the hood, yelling in two foreign languages. She was followed by three young men in black leather waving a red flag like a club, then by a stampede of gray camou-suited men in face masks and helmets. The driver got the right idea that being elsewhere was in his best interests. Flooring the accelerator, he sped away, making a U-turn across all lanes.

The chase ran by the girls standing on the sidewalk, beginning its second revolution. Minako, now aiming at making a creer in sports, was in excellent form. The skinheads were driven by rage. The camou-suited men were pushing forward with grim determination. As they began their third lap, Makoto noticed rubber truncheons in their hands. Police, then?

"I wonder," Michiru asked rhetorically, "for how long are they going to keep this running exercise?"

There was no fourth lap. A half of the camou-suited men jogged back, to stand in a line. They parted in front of Minako, but closed in front of her pursuers, bracketing them. The tussle had been short: against the four times of advantage in numbers, multiplied by a much greater skill, the skinheads stood no chance. The only thing they managed to do was striking with their ribs at their opponents' heavy boots. Purely by accident, mind you.

"Mina, go back—" Makoto began.

"Hi!" Minako addressed the camou-suited men loudly in English. "Could you tell me where is the airport is in this town of yours?"

Makoto's eye twitched.

"All we need now is trouble with police," Haruka grumbled. "Without any papers as we are..."

But the camou-suited men reacted to the blond's question with exaggerated friendliness. Warily, even. While most of them were dragging the three handcuffed carcasses to their truck, the one that looked like he was their leader stayed back. He tried to explain something to Minako. As he obviously didn't know English while she couldn't understand Russian, the dialog devolved into to gestures, mono-syllabic words and feeble attempts to clarify. Finally, the strange soldier or policeman said his good-byes, saying some parting wisdom, and ran to his truck. A reinforced door with a barred window slammed shut. The truck roared spitting out a bluish cloud, and pulled away with a groaning.

Minako waved her friends as she joined them on the sidewalk.

"What did he tell you?" Rei asked. "Something useful, I hope? And what is this 'omoh'?"(note 2)

"No idea," the blond waved her off carelessly. "However! He kept pointing there," she pointed down the street in the direction they were previously going, "and some of his words felt like 'kilometer' and 'auto'. I think."

"Just great," Makoto quiped. "And this was worth making all that circus show with the local hooligans."

"Hooligans?" Minako asked.

"I can smell their kind from a kilometer away," the tall brunette replied flatly, crossing her arms. "These guys were asking for it, plainly and deliberately. How could you be such... such..."

"A blond?" Minako asked innocently, wrapping a lock of her hair around her finger.

"At times, you a normal, sane person," Makoto said with a sigh. "More experienced and observant than me. But at times you are, forgive my bluntness, a complete air-headed idiot."

"It happens." Minako shrugged philosophically as she went in the intended direction. "Everyone does have their strong and weak sides."

"That wasn't what I was talking about," Makoto grumbled, moving to follow her.

"By the way, Mina-chan," Rei injected. "I just recalled that their Gorubachev had been replaced by Yelitsin. A few years ago, in fact. Knowing politicians, it's entirely possible that both Gorby-kun and his peresuturoika are now considered a faux pas".

"That's it!" The blond hit her fist against her palm. "And here I was wondering why did these commies take such a dislike with me."

"Weren't communists swept away with that same perestroika?" Haruka suggested, but without much conviction.

"Have you noticed," Michiru joined the conversation, "that their flag was somehow... wrong?"

"Wrong?" Rei replied, surprised. "I thought there were hammer and sickle on a red field?"

"I haven't," Minako admitted. "It was hard to see details while they were pounding me with it."

"Yes, but these were _black_ ·hammer and sickle, in a white circle," Michiru explained. "At the exact center of a red flag."

"That does remind me of something, vaguely," Makoto admitted.

"It does," Rei agreed. "There's some association with manji, but it keeps slipping away. I can't recall what it is."

The street continued beyond the square, diving downhill. Now there was a row of fir trees on the lawn separating the sidewalk from the road. The sidewalk sported small sets of steps at times.

"It's so unlike Tokyo here," Rei noted in wonder. "Everything is poor and shoddy, but they waste so much space so frivolously, only a rare billionaire could afford it like this back at home."

"They use the same trick in Los Angeles," Minako piped in, "with lawns and sidewalks. Only they use palm trees there."

"You haven't been in Los Angeles," Rei rebuked flatly. "You can't know if they only have one street like that and they show it exclusively."

But here, in this town, all streets were like that. As if designed to grow into. They saw it while crossing a couple crossroads.

Then, a rectangular square opened at the right, with a long, two-story building running its length. There was a chain of large letters running along the top of its front wall.

"Abtobok three ah-lambda," Rei read. "Bugger, this makes my head ache. Who invented this script?"(note 3)

"It seems we came to the right place," Makoto said, pointing at a couple buses parked diagonally on the mostly empty square.

Minako strode purposefully to a dirty bus with curtains on its windows and a funny air intake above its round back end. But she soon stopped in confusion: "Where are the doors?" She was staring at the solid side of the bus, trying in vain to find any cracks. "Are they climbing through windows?"

"On the right side, of course," Haruka explained patronizingly as she approached the bus from the correct side. "They have right driving here, the same as in America. We derived our left driving from Britain, it is rarely used across the globe."

"Oh," Minako replied sheepishly. She haven't been anywhere but Britain outside of Japan. "I see."

Michiru meanwhile tried to converse with a middle-aged woman that had been guarding the bus from inside. The woman kept trying to send them somewhere, waving at the two-story building and telling them something loudly, in exaggeratedly short words. As if that was making her Russian less incomprehensible. There were only two universal words they found so far: "aeroport" and "kilometrov".

Michiru decided to resort to bribery. But, being a well-off young lady, she grossly overestimated the required initial value. At a sight of a fifty-dollar note the woman's eyes lit with blind, unthinking greed. She then proceeded to tell a long sob-story. Probably involving thirteen starving kids or something like that, to better hike up the price.

"Come on," Rei was grumbling under her breath. "Stop wasting our time. We can't understand a word anyway."

Meanwhile, two men approached, attracted by the ruckus like piranhas by blood. They popped out of two cars parked at the square's edge. One was middle-aged and slightly plumpish, the other was younger. Haruka tensed at first at their abrupt appearance, but the two took extremely flattering looks. They started talking rapidly, gesticulating wildly, while looking at the girls pleadingly and at each other unfriendly. Just like street vendors.

"I think, this wold be better," Michiru noted, addressing her friends. She apologized hastily to the woman who had already grew sour, seeing where this was going. Then she addressed the men with a quintessential question: _how much?_

The two started gesticulating with even more energy, rolling their eyes and counting with their fingers. Michiru started walking to the two cars, accompanied by the men at her sides, haggling. Her friends were following her.

"What is going on?" Makoto wondered. "Who are they?"

"They don't look like KGB agents," Minako admitted, eying them critically.

"Illegal taxi drivers?" Haruka suggested.

"Seems so," Rei agreed. "Though, I haven't noticed legal taxis in this town. Unless they paint them gray, without any markings."

The situation kept growing more tense as they approached the cars. Judging by their tone, the cabbies were ready to sell their mothers now. They were groveling before the emerald-haired girl. But behind her back they were trading glares that would make an alpha wolf wet itself.

Then Michiru pulled a thin bunch of ten-dollar notes from her inside pocket. She thought to find the price by counting the real money as both the men knew nothing of English while she could not discern anything but "aeroport" in their speech. Alas, this proved to be a spectacularly bad idea. The sight of money was the last drop. Michiru herself missed the exchange behind her back. The other girls couldn't warn her in time. The drivers held for a few seconds longer, hissing through their teeth with faked politeness at Michiru and growling at each other. Then, almost simultaneously, they rushed toward the backs of their cars.

Michiru was taken aback. Haruka got a fright as she imagined _what_ ·could they keep in their trunks in this wild country. By some reason, her mind kept conjuring bazookas and Tommy-guns.

The plumpish middle-aged man proved to be the owner of a dark-cherry sedan of unusually angular form, like it was designed by a cubist. Even its headlights were rectangular. With an ominous scraping sound, he pulled out a tire iron better sized for a wheeled APC.

The young one was the owner of an ancient silvery Toyota sporting a broken stop-light covered over with transparent adhesive tape. Silently throwing the back door open, he produced an aluminum baseball bat.

And so the manly men started approaching each other, glaring and shifting grips on their implements. To Haruka's horror and Minako's excitement. Like two dueling samurai.(note 4)

Michiru was still standing between them, lost. Then, gathering her wits, she shouted sharply: "Stop‼！"

Either the shout had effect, or the word turned out to be a universal one, but the drivers froze, lowering their blunt implements a bit.

"I will flip a coin now!" Michiru said loudly, pulling out an ordinary fifty-yen coin with a hole in its center. "You will be heads, you will be tails. Here we go! She threw the coin up, which distracted the rivals even more, making them watch the small metallic disk tumble through the air.

Michiru caught the coin on her palm, slapping her other palm over it. Then she lifted her other palm.

"The chance chose you," she said, addressing the middle-aged man to the left. Then she turned right, to the young man: "I'm very sorry, but fate wasn't favorable towards you."

He let out a frustrated breath, then strode back to his Toyota.

The other man wiped sweat from his brow with a napkin, relieved. Then he hurried to open the back doors.

Haruka knew no one would want to share the back seat with her. Where did they get so much prejudice? Unthinkingly, she opened the front left door to sit beside the driver. The sight of a steering wheel made her pause momentarily. Slapping her forehead, she went around the car while the four other girls were packing themselves onto the back seat.

A metallic clang made everyone jump. It turned out that the aggravated younger driver threw his bat into the trunk of his car forcefully. Then he slammed the back door closed with such a force it made the hapless vehicle sink a bit on its shock absorbers.

"It was a clever way to arbitrate them," Makoto said. "I thought there would be bloodshed."

"The coin just had to point at the smaller car," Rei grumbled, shifting around and jostling with Minako on the narrow seat.

"Oh, it was no random chance," Michiru replied quietly, seated in the center. "I lied. I felt that other one being too unscrupulous. Then, his car is ill cared for. There's many years worth of dirt under the adhesive tape on that stop-light. Also, he was the first one to rush for a weapon."

"All right, all right, we got it," Rei agreed. "Mina, you win. Sit in my lap. This is still better than sitting all askew."

(シーンブレイク)

Five girls were staring gloomily at the airfield through the windows of a modest two-story building that was playing the role of airport here. Somewhere out there there was a plane that could bring them to the city of Habarofusuku with its international airport allowing them to fly to Tokyo.

The guard at the exit was staring back, checking the girls periodically with his vigilant eyes

"Let's just stowaway," suggested Minako.

"A great idea," Rei replied with sarcasm. "And how do you think we'll sneak onboard? Just stroll out there looking innocent? And they won't check our tickets?"

"It may be a backwater hole," Makoto added, "but they won't let you even close to the airfield."

"It's no use without papers," Haruka stated the obvious. "Why do they need your passport to buy tickets? It's a domestic line!"

"Every citizen here does have a domestic passport," Michiru note philosophically. "You cannot buy tickets for any means of transportation without it. I don't know if it's a local peculiarity of this prison province or the entire country is like that. I never concerned myself with such matters before today."

"Let's get out of here," Makoto suggested. "The guard is growing too interested in us."

The girls walked outside, towards the cold wind and the vista beautiful in its untamed wilderness. Flat mountains covered with forest were stretching into bluish haze, disturbed with only a narrow highway and a small block of five-storied buildings higher up the mountain.

"What were we thinking when we decided to return home on our own?" Haruka asked rhetorically with a sigh.

"That Russia is a wild country," Rei replied dejectedly. "That they are riding bears here." She cast a glance at the parking lot packed with cars: half off-roaders of Japanese make and half some brutally-Russian mini-vans of uniformly mousy gray color. "That they'd just let us waltz into a plane."

"That there's a seat of our domestic diplomacy present," Venus injected. "In this regard it's really a wild country."

"We are now simply in deep backwater," Haruka explained. "Even more so that the deepest corners of Hokkaido."

"Maybe it's really a worthy idea to stowaway?" Michiru suggested suddenly. "In a luggage compartment, for example?"

"How will we sneak out to the airfield?" objected Rei.

"Right!" Minako slammed her fist against her palm. "Through the back door!"

"What back door?" Rei asked.

"Well, the airport hangars and other manifestations of civilization all are on one side of the airstrip, right?" the blond explained. "With wild forest on the other side. While the edges of the airstrip, and the territory in general, is overgrown with unmown bushes dense like jungle."

"This could work," agreed Haruka. "If there's a fence of razor wire in these bushes, we'd have no trouble jumping over it in our Senshi forms."

(シーンブレイク)

The grass along the airstrip was wild, unmown. With grass like this one doesn't need bushes. Such a natural backwater. Crouching down, the five sailor-suited warriors sneaked close to the airplane. It was standing conveniently with its tail toward the thicket. They identified it by its tail number written in large digits on its tall vertical stabilizer. They re-checked the number written on a piece of paper.

Close up, the plane wasn't looking inspiring. It was all weathered, colors washed out, all matte without the slightest gloss. The rivets and flap edges were standing out sharply, outlined by dirt that was also forming streaks in places. This workhorse wasn't spoiled with shampoo or polish. There were dark spots on the tail next to the exhaust openings of the engines, bunched in pods around the tail.

Neptune pulled out her mirror and started surveying the plane through it as if she held a magnifying glass. An impressive magical magnifying glass.

"Hurry up," Mars urged her looking at the fuel truck moving away. "They'll start loading luggage, or doing something else they should."

"Be patient," Neptune reined her in, continuing to peer. "I'm not a technician, I have a hard time making sense of this jumble." She focused on the tail, then she hmmph-ed turning her mirror this and that. Finally, she put it away. "I'm not entirely sure, but it looks there's an unused luggage compartment there."

"Excellent!" Venus exclaimed, making a motion to jump onto her feet. Mars jerked her back down. "Hey, what now?"

"Take a look around first! And what is excellent?"

"Imagine," Venus explained, "us sneaking into a luggage compartment _in use_. And then they come to load the luggage. They open it, and there we are, like, hi, didn't expect us?"

"I got it, I got it." Mars backed down.

"Or, even more funny," Venus said developing her idea as she raised her head cautiously to take a look around. "They push it in without looking. Then someone unloads the luggage, and there we are. Squashed against the walls by trunks."

"Enough, I got it already!" Mars snapped quietly.

"The hatch is on the right side," added Neptune.

The girls sneaked along the thick grass, then jumped up and crossed the last remaining meters. There were people on the airfield, but they were far away. The wide undercarriages with three pairs of large wheels posed a good cover together with their nacelles and open hatch covers. The girls hoped they won't be noticed.

"Where's that hatch?" Uranus asked. Being the tallest of them, she had to duck a little under the plane's belly.

"The third turbine is right in its butt," Venus proclaimed cheerfully after she jumped high to look into the opening at the very tip of the plane's tail. What's that pipe for, then?" She pointed up, where something that looked similar to the engine pods was growing forward from the base of the vertical stabilizer. "They aren't on the same axis, how come?"

"Stop fussing around, they'll notice you!" Mars berated her. "Like we don't have anything else to worry!" She moved so that the undercarriage strut hid her from the distant men.

"Here it is." Neptune pointed at a small square hatch barely noticeable behind the bulk of the right engine pod. The top of the hatch was practically flush with the pod console growing from the plane's tail.

"Can't reach it from here," Jupiter said. "Climb up, I'll hold you." She bent down.

"Let's pop it open!" Uranus proclaimed with confidence as she climbed onto the other girl's shoulders to pull a sunk handle out. She turned it... Or rather tried to turn... "Check it, am I turning it in the right direction?" she addressed Neptune. The emerald haired Senshi hastily pulled out her mirror, concentrating.

"Hurry!" Mars hissed crouching down. "There are people coming!"

"The right one," Neptune confirmed. "It just stuck a bit."

"For how long... was this... compartment unused?" Uranus grit through her teeth, groaning and putting superhuman strength to use. She was afraid to break the accursed handle: steel is only steel, after all. Jupiter stumbled, then put her feet further apart.

"Where are you going?" Mars hissed seeing Venus dash, bent down, under the left wing — right towards the approaching technicians. But she failed to grab the other girl. "Stop, you idiotic... Gah...?" Her eyes bulged out in shock.

"Oh, my!" Neptune exclaimed quietly covering her mouth with her hand.

Grabbing at the wing edge, Minako flung herself up. The technicians footsteps ceased. In the ensuing silence, the blond's bare feet pattered clearly along the wing towards the body. At the same time, a groaning creak sounded, accompanied with Uranus exclaiming "Gotcha!"

Neptune grabbed the shell-shocked Mars under her elbow and dragged her to the hatch where Jupiter's legs were disappearing. Both the Senshi jumped up simultaneously, to be grabbed by their comrades and pulled into the narrow opening. A second later, Venus jumped in after sliding down from the engine pod console.

Shouts and hurried footsteps reached from the outside. Uranus lowered the hatch, hurrying but trying not to make noise. In the ensuing pitch darkness the lock clicked clearly.

"Are you completely bonkers," Mars started dressing the blond down in a whisper.

"Oh really?" the invisible Venus disagreed. "I think it was a perfect distra—" There was a dull thud in the darkness. "Ouch. The ceiling is low here, like in a linen closet. Is there enough height to sit?"

"Quiet, both of you!" Jupiter breathed out fiercely.

The voices below were sounding agitated and dumbfounded. Then the men gradually calmed down and dispersed. Something began clicking and clanking distantly. They were doing something with the plane. Then someone jerked the hatch handle. The girls' hearts almost stopped but jerking was the only thing they did.

Long minutes of waiting stretched on.

(シーンブレイク)

"Gods, I'm feeling unwell," Jupiter groaned. "Lying here down like in a coffin..."

"I understand," Mars replied grumpily, "but get off my feet please."

"That's not me," Jupiter objected, glad for the distraction. However brave a front she put up, her fear of airplanes was still there. Not as serious as Ranma's cat phobia, but still. She was a child when both her parents died in a crash. One dos not just forget such things.

"I think there was a switch to the side of the hatch," Neptune noted.

There was fumbling in the dark, then a click. A lone dim lamp lit up on the wall.

"Thank you," Jupiter said with sincere gratitude.

"Naaaw, it's better in a linen closet," Venus concluded surveying the dirty floor. "It's cleaner at least."

"At least we all fit here," Neptune noted philosophically.

"Yeah, if we all lie down in a row like sardines in a can," Mars replied as she surveyed the rectangular compartment. Then she hit her head against the low ceiling when she tried to move.

"Well, it's at least wide enough to lie down," Uranus tried to be positive as she stretched on the floor. "It could have been too narrow for even that." She tried to stretch her arms, but there wasn't enough room.

"I wonder," Venus injected with inappropriate enthusiasm. "How well will the engines be heard? There are two on consoles to the sides of us, barely a meter away. And one behind us, right beyond this wall," She patted the metallic wall. "Too close for comfort, to think of it." Her enthusiasm was draining rapidly. "I hope nothing happens to them in flight. I mean, like explosion, or fire..."

Jupiter jumped up, slamming her forehead against the metallic ceiling resoundingly. She flopped back, with only a titanic effort of her will holding herself from shaking. "Thank you, my dear," she said, her voice was seeping sincere poison. "Thank you _so_ ·much for your encouragement." She stretched on her back forcing herself to lie still. She was just trembling at times.

Venus had the decency to flush deep red under the accusing stares of her friends.

(シーンブレイク)

" _Puriyejaite ku namna kalimuuu,_ " Venus sang, her voice resonating powerfully in the confined metallic box, overpowering even the noise of three close-by turbofans. " _Zudesyunas' harosha yappa-goda-a-a-a_..." (note 5)

Everyone's ears were positively ringing. Maybe it was because of the sparse air, as the compartment proved to be non-pressurized. But most of them preferred to blame Venus' singing skill. Or, rather, her wild enthusiasm causing her total inability to hold back.

"Hush, Mina." Mars slammed her elbow into the singer's side, making her fall silent. "Do you want them to run here right after after the landing, to check who has been torturing a cat the whole flight?"

"Or that they have problems with one of the engines," Uranus added. But she wasn't heard as she wasn't yelling.

"You must be envious!" the blond shouted back turning to face mars. "My singing isn't that bad... Right, Mako-chan?"

"Ummm..." Jupiter was torn between telling the truth and unwillingness to hurt her friend's feelings. "I wouldn't say... By the way, where did you pick this song up? No, forget that. _When_ ·did you pick it up?"

"Eh, I just heard it," Venus dodged the answer. She then she tried to continue the sonic torture, but Neptune didn't let her: "Are you sure there are no words inappropriate for a girl in this song?"

Venus shut up mid-word. Then objected, but without conviction: "Naw, that's unlikely."

"How brave." Mars didn't miss the chance to needle her. "Singing who knows what in an unfamiliar language. I wouldn't dare." She patted the other girl's shoulder.

"Well, the guy who taught it to me wasn't looking glamorous," the blond had to admit. "But it can't be... Or can it?"

She did not continue.

The others sighed in relief. Three turbofans close by felt like a blessed silence.

(シーンブレイク)

May 5 — September 10, 2013. Translated May 19 — September 11, 2013.

 **Ding!** Tropes unlocked:  
Misplaced Wildlife

 **Author's notes:**

 **1**  
Explaining the joke: the geographical names in these parts are anything but Russian. Everything but the range itself is named by the native tribes. Whose languages _do_ ·sound weird for a Russian ear.

 **2**  
"Riot police squad". Of course she reads it wrong, as what is looking like H is really N.

 **3**  
"АВТОВОКЗАЛ" is "bus station"

 **9**  
Believe me, I was surprised too when I learned that by the rules, Japanese-derived words in English don't have a plural form. It all stems from having to use the plural form of the other language exactly (so, for example, "valenok" - "valenki", not "valenoks"). But Japanese doesn't have a plural form, they use other mechanisms to mark that something is numerous (for example, "girls" may be "Usagi dachi", literally "Usagi and others", and so on. There is no direct match). Thus, strictly, "Zoro does have three katana." Spelling "katana **s** " would be incorrect. As I still have far to go in learning this language, I tend to pay attention to such things.

 **5**  
The song "Come visit us at Kolyma" is so memetic (a brilliant 1968 comedy is to blame) it's _absolutely_ ·impossible to google any details. So I cannot tell you who is the author or when was it written. I can only say that the punchline here is in the pure innocence of this phrase carrying ominous undertones for a crook. "Visit Kolyma," yeah. Where most prisons are located.

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— Crystal  
— Orphus users (4 bugs so far)  
— Crystal  
— Orphus users (9 bugs so far)


	15. Pink Horror

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled**

 **Chapter 15  
Pink Horror**

(シーンブレイク)

Ranma voiced her feelings as she looked into the distance from atop a cliff. Thus proving that swearing could be heart-felt and expressive without resorting to cuss words. In fact, she only said one word, quite innocuous one at that. But with such an expression, with such twisting of vowels at its start and finish, that it made obvious the fact that a master like her has no need for cuss words.(note 1)

The Sun was pouring heat down from the high tropical sky. The sea breeze was ruffling her hair, playing with the silk of her red shirt. The view from this cliff top was a magnificent one. Bays sparkling with waves, steep cliffs crowned with green foam of forests... The girl glared darkly at the vista of nature's beauty. The jagged shoreline was forming a labyrinth of small islands and straits. Their goal lay some thirty kilometers to the south, where the damned labyrinth of land and sea was disappearing in the bluish haze. Ranma felt like growling. The ocean waters, that stopped their advance for the umpteenth time, were swarming with black triangles of shark fins. Akane, despite all her training and improvement, still remained a "hammer-girl", possessing the buoyancy of one.

"Maybe, I try to run across it?" There was no confidence in Akane's voice, only the hopeless obstinacy.

"Stupid idea. It's too wide here, even if you don't stumble." Ranma squinted, assessing the distance to the other shore. "Naw, forget it. I slayed two dozen sharks, I think, while pulling you out the last time." She cast an eloquent side glance at her torn pants leg, then at Akane's hastily patched backpack that sported several parallel gashes. "And it was quite narrow there."

"I think we should go to that nav-point one," Akane suggested. "It couldn't have appeared without a reason. Maybe, there's a boat there."

"A boat won't cut here, we'd need a battleship," Ranma grumbled as she cast a parting glance at the sharks circling slowly. "What sort of chowder they have here to grow so huge?"

They turned back, searching blindly for a path along the rocky islands jagged with bays. They were moving fast, practically flying across tree tops and rocky peaks, but they had to meander a lot, making detours to just take a look around from a suitable high point. They also had to backtrack often. Their effective speed was pathetic.

The travelers stopped on a clifftop, examining the horizon from under hanging branches. There was an another expanse of sea ahead, this one probably a kilometer wide. And again it was swarming with sharks.

"Did the map update?" Ranma asked, without much hope.

Akane opened the medallion. Then she sighed. "No, it still says 'wait, database synchronization in progress'. What could have jammed in this thing?" She clicked the buttons with a sour look, getting a nice overall map of their part of the continent. Then she zoomed it in. The immediate surrounding area expanded, turning to be a chaotic mosaic of triangles, with the smallest detail some fifty kilometers across. The point that signified their position was glowing proudly inside a sharp, narrow triangle of solid ground, with their goal on its very tip. Such lowly details as the mess of thousands of bays and islands was beneath the map's resolution.

There was a sign to the north-east, labeled eloquently as 'nav-point #1'. What was it, and what the demon was it doing on the map, the girls had no clue. They were currently traveling towards it, intent of finding out.

"I had enough," Ranma proclaimed. "Screw the point, we have to save Usagi."

The medallion beeped.

"The loop is non-closed again," Akane informed in a tired voice. "And the transport node disappeared, just like the last time."

"Does this piece of trash read our thoughts?" Ranma was outraged. "It's like someone is herding us towards that place! I don't like this."

After they first started moving towards the mysterious point, any attempts to change their mind began causing the medallion have these strange glitches. It was like they were herded along some route, not letting them stray.

"But what could we do?" Akane asked.

"Go south, then find the pyramid on our own. You do remember its position on the map, do you?"

"I'm not sure." Akane sounded doubtful. "The map is too imprecise, there's nothing to fix against. But most islands here are higher than the pyramid, I think. If it is standing at the sea level, we could spend a long time searching for it blindly."

"All right, let's go to that bugger point then," Ranma agreed reluctantly.

The medallion beeped.

"It's closed," Akane noted succintly. "The node is back."

"I sooo don't like this," Ranma voiced with pessimism.

"I think if we go atop of that ridge," Akane began, pointing into the distance to the left. She leaned dangerously over the cliff edge, holding at a tree trunk with one hand.

"Won't do," the redhead interrupted her, dismissing the idea. "See that rock in front of it? There's a strait in front of it."

"What if we—"

They were interrupted rudely by velociraptors who started pouring down from the tree tops. The girls had to put the matters of direction aside for a séance of kicking. The orange, black-striped buggers were fiendishly inventive, with each pack seemingly thinking themselves to be smarter than others. As a result, their ilk had to be beaten with annoying repetitiveness, wasting time and energy.

The girls set for the mysterious point. It was barely ten kilometers in a straight line, but they had to make almost half a hundred, consisting of climbing sheer cliffs, meandering through velociraptor-infested woods and fording straits where it was narrow enough, with transporting Akane on a log and blasting sharks with ki charges. When they broke the shade of the woods and saw their goal, both girls were heaving, drenched in sweat. The vast majority of people, including commandos and professional athletes, would be down like wrung-out rags by now, unable to continue. But Ranma possessed an epic endurance even in his female form, while Akane compensated for her lesser endurance with an epic stubbornness. And so they were here, surveying the view that opened in front of them.

"It looks kind of like a submarine," Ranma concluded, trying to figure out what exactly it was that they found. "The size of a mountain."

"Why the wings, then?" Akane disagreed. "On the other hand, if these are flippers..."

"Anyway, this thing won't move ever again."

The ruin, the nature of which they were trying to figure out, was a worn and beaten gray shape of smooth outlines and titanic proportions. A wide, stocky body was rising over the sea waters flowing smoothly into a long and narrow protrusion, like a particularly thick spinal ridge, that in turn was rounding smoothly at the top. The visible end was rounded tapering, like a nose of a passenger jet. What Akane called wings were growing out of its top ridge, looking like submarine rudders or stubby wings. Their connection to the ridge was as smooth, without a single edge, as the whole object was.

Was, as in the past tense. Because the entire bulk was pockmarked with yawning dark holes and covered with the same blanket of forests as the surrounding mountains. It wasn't clear if it had been damaged deliberately or was just dilapidated. Judging by what the girls accepted as the probable stern, which was engulfed with forest-covered rubble of the collapsed seaside cliffs, this thing has been lying here for centuries.

"Look!" Ranma pointed with her hand.

Akane squinted into the distance. There were rounded gray sides, then the green of forest further up, looking like a thin spongy coat on this bulk, then gray again, of the top ridge sides rising smoothly. Further up there was forest again, crowning the ridge and covering the 'wings'. And higher still there was...

"Ah, I see. There's a pipe up there?"

There was something thin sticking out of the ridge, close to its front end. It looked awfully similar to a periscope. If it really was a submarine.

"More like a tower," Ranma corrected her. "A huge one, at that. Don't let the distance fool you. That top part alone is as big as two cruise liners."

"Right!" Akane opened the medallion to call up the map. "Well, it seems the nav-point is right there. What could it be, I wonder?"

"We'll know when we get there," Ranma replied philosophically. "We only have to go around that bay."

After going around again, they finally found their way to the unknown object. The transition from rocky hills was barely perceptible. There was the same forest stretching on, filled with the same velociraptors. Only the ground becoming a very smooth rise hinted at walking over something other than simple rocks. The rise was becoming flatter gradually. A few hundred meters later, the girls found a hole, the size of a sports field. The edges weren't visible under the carpet of greenery overhanging them and hanging down. There was a real jungle down in the hole, dark and humid, covering some broken shapes like a green burial shroud. Judging by the warbling and whooping, it was lively down there. Ranma cast one uninterested glance down, then continued on her way. The sleek shape of the central ridge was visible over the trees on the other side of the hole.

A few hundred meters further, the ground started curling upwards again. The forest ended abruptly, revealing an unexpected sight. To the right, the green continued, climbing further up the familiar gray surface. To the left, the rounded side of the unidentified totaled object was shining with the white of scuffed porcelain. There were no holes there, though it was hard to tell from the positions where the girls were standing. They were like ants crawling across a great dome, able to see only a small part of the immense whole.

"It should have been a great kaboom," Ranma commented as he compared the shiny white expanse to the left with the gray porous surface to the right. The dividing line was sharp, zig-zagged. The white layer turned out to be a palm's width thick. The white 'icing', or whatever it was, turned out to be slippery, impossible to climb on. And it was unbelievably hard.

"If you slip once, you'll keep sliding down until you hit the sea," Akane concluded, shivering from the thought alone. There was no forest on the white left side. The surface was sloped at every point, even on the more or less horizontal parts.

The girls took to the right, moving through the forest along its edge. Then they started ascending the ridge along its right side. The gray surface proved to be really porous, full of dents and pores the size of a soccer ball. The climb was a cakewalk.

From the top it became obvious that only the right side of the ridge was overgrown with forest. To the left, only the glossy white was shining. They took further to the right, away from this treacherous surface: to get there was the same as to stumble onto a bobsleigh track, there was no stopping your sliding to your doom.

They were halfway along the ridge to the tower when Akane got caught in a snare. A small curled down tree whipped straight, tightening the loop on her ankle tightly and pulling Akane's leg up above her head, which was accompanied by her startled yelp.

"Hey! Not funny!" she snapped at Ranma who was snorting, choking with barely suppressed laugh. "Heeey-ho!" Tumbling, Akane snapped the tree with one motion, at the same time tearing the snare off her foot. "Hmm... It's not a rope, it's more like a TV antenna cable."

"So there's someone living in that tower." Ranma frowned. "Let's be careful. This snare was set for a velociraptor. I'd set lots of traps against these nuisances too, if I lived here. But there could be a different kind of traps around. For a human."

They took to the trees, stopping from time to time to watch and listen. The strange 'wings' were now right below the travelers, making their true size apparent. With a surface of a city block, the right 'wing' was overgrown with forest, while the left one was glistening white, there was a sickly growth of threes on its very tip. The tower was rising from the forest ahead, a round pipe the size of a high-rise. Its walls similarly white on the left and gray on the right. There were no signs of life.

They approached it cautiously. The tower was full of complex-shaped openings. Someone inside it could have been watching the girls.

They circled the tower, keeping to the tree-tops. There was a dead silence, if one disregarded the usual bird calls.

The travelers dropped down, landing on a raised platform that was circling the tower.

"This is really something," Ranma noted as she surveyed a veritable field of traps stretching below them, in the forest twilight. There were snares, some giant mousetraps, suspicious ropes, spiked logs hanging promisingly overhead... Every kind of trap was presented here. "Looks like the work of a professional Rambo. I wonder, where did they find bamboo for the spikes? I haven't noticed any growing around."

"And the bottom branches are sawed off on the nearby trees," Akane added. "Are they expecting a full-scale siege here? I hope they don't interpret our approach wrong."

"I think, all of this is for our old acquaintances," Ranma disagreed, pointing at a couple of velociraptor carcasses hanging limply from a spiked rake, carrion flies working overtime. "But you are right, we must be careful. These bastards could drive anyone up the wall."

They started walking around the tower. Soon, a tall, narrow breach was found in the gray side, covered from inside with rough logs tied together haphazardly with a cable of some sort.

"And here is the door," Ranma commented. There was a rough door closing off the bottom of the breach. It was made using the same technology, but it was placed outside, opening outward as well.

"Anyone home?" Akane shouted, as she opened the door with some effort: there was a taut wire tied to the handle, going inside. "Hello! Anyone here?" She poked her head inside, opening the door wider and trying to discern anything in the darkness. "Can I enter?"

A metallic scraping sound rolled inside the tower.

"Gack!" Akane commented as she jumped away from a huge blade that fell in the door frame turning it into a guillotine.

"As should be expected from someone living on such breeding grounds," Ranma said in an exaggeratedly lecturing voice as she stood there, her arms crossed, a wise mine on her face.

Akane shivered. Then she leaned in again, very carefully, bending over the blade that was now forming a threshold of sorts.

"Hello-o! Is anyone here? We came in peac— Ack!"

A _second_ ·blade rushed down at her. Overextended, Akane could only dive inside. Her tumble turned into a hand-spring when she saw spikes sticking out of a grate covering the floor. Something clanked, whooshed, then the air filled with sharp stakes, crossbow bolts and circular saw blades. Akane was dodging frantically, evading the projectiles with pure speed: there was no hostile ki, no killing intent, only non-living mechanisms. On top of that, her danger sense was reacting sluggishly, belatedly! Akane started panicking, straining her hearing and vision to the limit: her haphazard jumping across the large room kept provoking more and more volleys. Thankfully, the traps were loud enough, clicking or clanking as they unleashed their deadly load.

Finally, they ran out.

"And this, my young apprentice," Ranma concluded in an insufferably lecturing voice, "is why you should always poke it with a stick first."

Turning around, Akane found that the other girl hadn't moved an inch. The redhead just stood there wise-faced, with her arms crossed. Honestly! Akane felt an urge to smack her. Alas, there was reason in the redhead's words. The point was painfully valid. Akane felt shame. Why did she have to lean into a trap like that? She took a look around. Her eyes were starting to adapt, but it was still hard to see in the gloom. The cylindrical space inside the tower was as wide as their doujou. There were piles of something along the walls. The walls themselves seemed covered with thick shadows of something running vertically, and with large protrusions. The ceiling height was unknown, drowning in complete darkness. Akane started moving towards the exit, stepping carefully amidst the spike racks and sharp projectiles now littering the floor.

"I don't think we are welcome here," she noted hesitantly.

"Screeee-shing!" agreed a third blade as it fell right in front of her.

A siren sounded shrilly from somewhere above. Followed with a burst of psychotic cackling. The voice was thin and raspy, like that of a cartoonish mouse.

"Watch out." Ranma abandoned her mask of smug superiority, she was alert now. "It seems we have a single Robinson here, who went nuts from loneliness!"

Akane was looking around too, keeping careful balance amidst a spike rack, when there was a scraping sound from above, accompanied with debris falling down.

"Gotcha, brya, gotcha my plump meat-bun!" the invisible psycho screeched. In Japanese. Akane was so taken aback, not expecting to hear her native tongue, that she completely missed a weighed net that dropped onto her.(note 2)

"Ack!" She ducked, trying to tear the net without losing her balance: it proved to be slippery and sturdy, as if woven from a thick, oiled fishing line. "We are not—" She was interrupted by a burst of demented giggling. While she was puzzled by a source of ki, weak and somewhat wrong, that appeared suddenly, someone landed behind her noisily.

"Teee-hee-he-he!" Akane was clutched in some sort of a great pincer. "Deine— Yakk!"

Akane was never tolerant to those who couldn't keep their hands to themselves. The raving psycho flew to a far wall where they crashed into something, causing an avalanche of tin clatter.

"Honestly!" Akane voiced her indignation, throwing the remains of the net off: it was torn apart by the pincer when it has been sliding off the girl. She checked that she wasn't cut anywhere. "Come out to the light! Now!" she shouted, twirling around at the sound at the clatter caused by someone floundering hesitantly. "Stand where I can see you!"

"Owie, brya..." There was a noisy clatter as a vague shadow rose up, then started moving towards the door with slow, careful hops. "Mein Kopf isn't feeling too bien..."

Akane decided to step outside, joining Ranma. The redhead cast a look of disparaging disappointment at her, and the Tendou heir steamed inside from an explosive mix of shame and indignation. The nerve, mocking her! How could she fail so easily for the lack of hostile intent! Oh, the shame! Could he take it easy with his own wife's mistakes? Psychos are dangerous because they could lop your head off without any hostile intent. Why does he have to look so smug, how many times did he himself fall for Kunou's tender hugs? All because the wannabe samurai didn't have any _hostile_ ·intent towards Ranma's female form. Wait a minute, is the tower dweller a pervert, then? If so, it explains much. These lechers always find a way to fool the girl's danger sense, creeping in on you like they were invisible.

"Come out!" she barked, a bit more aggressively that she intended to.

There was a rustling sound inside the tower. Then a head poked cautiously out of the door-frame side. The muzzle — you couldn't call it a face — had three different-sized eyes, blinking owlishly and asynchronously in the daylight. The pause was stretching thin.

"Are you going to keep hiding there?" Ranma inquired unfriendly.

"Oh lala..." Two huge rabbit ears rose above the head, having been flattened back before. "Oh lala‼！" And the stranger jumped out, erupting in an relieved-happy-hysterical laugh.

The girls made an involuntary step back. A human-sized, acid-pink rabbit stared at them, his three asymmetrically placed eyes rotating wildly. The giggle-like warble kept on and on, like he didn't have to breathe. Akane noticed that his front paws ended with small hooves, but just then the rabbit rose upright. And these turned out to be not hooves, but protrusions on the joints of chitin scythes folded inwards. His paws were like that of a praying mantis. So that was the 'pincer' that had grabbed her.

"EeeeeEEeehehee, _humansu_ -brya! Menschen-brya! _At long_ ·last-brya!" Shedding tears of happiness, the psychotic rabbit-mantiss hybrid started hopping towards the girls. There was nowhere to back away, the platform ended behind them, with a small drop leading to the killing field.

"Hey, I'm warning you!" Ranma barked menacingly. She felt chill along her spine: the mouth of the nightmarish creature was a narrow vertical slit, running from the point where humans have a chin, down through his neck almost to his chest. There was a fringe of small mandibles along the slit edges, _writhing_. On his chest something was also writhing, half-hidden by fur: either tentacles or segmented paws.

"Peeeeeeople!" the monster-rabbit voiced in a sobbing shriek, now in pure Japanese.(note 3) "My saviours!"

The lack of hostility played a bad joke again, now it was Ranma's turn. Her threatening warning and menacing glare had as much effect as a splash of water on water-fowl. Hopping up to the girl, he glomped her with all his appendages, which turned to be dozens, from tentacles to multi-segmented insectile arms.

Ranma roared, reddening, squeezed against the writhing.

The monster-rabbit started crying from happiness.

Akane smirked snidely at the redhead who had been lecturing her but a moment ago.

Strike.

"EEEeee-bryaaaa!" the receding voice sounded. "You got me wro—!" It cut abruptly with a crunch of branches: the pink one slammed into a tree crown.

A blessed silence descended. Only Ranma could be heard, huffing and steaming as she was straightening her clothes.

"Umm..." Akane began hesitantly as she was picking in the medallion. "You won't like this. The nav-point points at him. But I'm sure it was pointing inside the tower before."

"What?！" Ranma was outraged. "This perverted monster did something to our medallion?" She turned to glare darkly at the pink carcass hanging limply down from the tree. "He'd better make it go away. Or else..."

The monsterabbit(note 7) started slipping, grabbing at branches with loud crunching noises and kicking with his hind paws uselessly. The thicket of deathtraps was yawning invitingly below him.

"Should we save him?" Akane suggested reluctantly.

The branches broke. Squealing in panic, the pink rabbit landed with his feet on a log bristling with bamboo spikes, barely avoiding impaling himself in the process. The log, jostled from its triggering mechanism, swung down on two ropes like a swing, approaching the platform where the girls stood. When it reached the end of its arch and started swinging back, the monsterabbit fell off, to land against the platform side with a resounding smack. He was clutching at the platform top with his chitin scythes. "Eeee... Take me with you, _Ivan-tsarevich_ , I'll serve you!" he squeaked, dazed.

"Well, I'm not sure," Akane drawled doubtfully. She directed a side look at Ranma, who was sporting an highly uncharacteristic eye twitch. "Is 'Iwantsusarewichu' your name?"

"Naw... Brya... It was a purely rhetorical saying," groaned the pink one, finally devoid of his unhealthy vigor. He climbed awkwardly, pulling himself up onto the platform. Then he stood up and rubbed his chitin scythes against each other nervously, producing an ugliest sound, worse than nails against chalkboard. "My apologies, brya, you obviously verstehst nicht russishe volk tales... Well, have you decided? Will you take me with you? Will you?" A hope emerged in his voice, his energy was returning. "This _sutaruship_ ·turned out to be a total _sukam_ , brya. Like they deliberately planned to get rid of the poor, naïve, brya! Knowing that I'd never be able to break through the hordes of vicious, toothy saurses!" His voice gained an overblown dramatism. "I was stuck here, tragically devoid-brya of access to a lab! I almost went nuts here, alone, brya!" He sniffed in a pathetic manner and attempted to use the puppy dog eyes attack. Its effect was spoiled somewhat by his mouth slit moving constantly, with no relation to his speech. It looked like his voice was coming from somewhere inside his chest.(note 4)

"Right," Ranma commented with sarcasm. "It shows that you _didn't_ ·go nuts." The monsterabbit turned to her as she measured him with an unfriendly glare. "What did you do to our medallion, you freak?"

"I'm not a freak, brya!" he exclaimed with indignation. "I'm pink and fuzzy!" He smoothed his ears and the fur on his shoulders with four tentacles that shot out of his armpits, to pull back in afterward. "And I did no... You have a portal controller-brya?" he perked up suddenly. His three eyes glinted with an unhealthy gleam, boring into Ranma. He suddenly moved closer to her. "Really? You can use transport nodes-brya?"

"Keep your paws to yourself," Ranma growled, showing him a fist. The acid-pink one jerked away, shrinking into himself. "Akane,—"

"It's not a controller," Akane clarified. "What we have is a personal interactor."

"Can I see it, brya?" The monsterabbit whirled to face her, forgetting about Ranma instantly. "Can I? Can I?"

The redhead face-palmed. How, but _how_ ·could she remain so naively trusting!

"Err, no," Akane refused, restoring Ranma's hope and faith in humankind. "I'm very sorry, but too much depends on it..."

The pink rabbit wilted, his ears drooping.

"Do you know a way to the node, at least?" Ranma asked rudely, as she decided silently that a possible ambush could be damned. They would deal with the ambush somehow, they had to hurry. There was a constant feeling of urgency, of time slipping away. For how long Usagi, a city girl, could survive in the wild, even in a relatively favorable environment? They were putting much into hope, dismissing the probability of her landing in ocean or in frozen tundra.

"Iknow! I know, brya-brya!" The bunny jumped in agitation, displaying an ability to jump as high as one's head without any ki, just because of being a rabbit. "I have a map! A moment!" He got down to all fours and dashed into the tower. A little while later, noisy clatter started coming from inside, as if he was digging through piles of metal junk there.

"What do you think? Can we trust him?" Akane asked. She looked like she wanted to, but was doubtful.

"Trust him? We have just met him! In very suspicious circumstances, I should add. But if he does really have a map of this mess of islands..."

"So we take him with us?"

"We have to. There's no other choice." Ranma wasn't trilled. "Just look how naturally it is falling together."

The medallion beeped.

"Are you suspecting we are being led?" Akane did not want to think of such things, but in their circumstances any mistake threatened to become a disaster. She opened the medallion, to look what it was this time.

"I'm not suspecting, I'm sure. The only question is: who? It's either that knight, or this... pinky only plays harmless. Or it is the token fiddling with us, and it's simply how that leading loop works, in such stupid ways. I only hope it's the latter."

"The loop is closed," Akane commented. "The node is on the map. The nav-point is no longer there." She started fiddling with settings, mumbling under her breath.

Ranma grunted affirmatively: told you so.

The rabbit-mantis, meanwhile, emerged from the tower. There was a huge treasure chest attached to his back, like a backpack. "So you are taking me with you?" he addressed the girls in a lively, _too_ ·lively voice. He sounded suspiciously confident. "I'll be of use to you, you just wait and see! I'm useful! Ee-hee-he-hehe!" He jumped up in place, gesticulating wildly with his chitin scythes.

"Unfortunately, we are," Ranma grumbled. "And don't you dare slowing us down. Have you got the map?"

"Here!" He handed her a roll, holding it with three lesser arms. Where are his lungs, Ranma thought distractedly, if he hides so many appendages in his chest?

"Let's see..." Ranma plucked the roll unceremoniously. It unrolled like a spring, turning into a dirty plastic sheet. "What's with this crap?" She pointed at the mess of jagged concentric contours.

"Hypsometric curves, brya!" the monsterabbit replied indignantly. "Here's our _sutarship_... The fake..." He pointed at a pack of concentric ovals that stood out by its smoothness and symmetry. "And this," His appendage slid to the other edge of the map, brushing against Ranma's fingers, "is the transport node."

"Then this thick line is the sea level," said Ranma. "I got it, thank you, bye."

"It is, but it for the low point of the ebb." The pink one continued intruding, looking over her shoulder. "And for sixty years ago. The sea level had risen four meters sine then, and the shoreline suffered erosion in places—"

"Oh, we haven't introduced ourselves," Akane said at this moment, remembering suddenly. I am Tendou Akane.(note 5)

"Saotome Ranma", the redhead grumbled. She was contemplating if she should hit the self-invited companion. The look of the writhing mouth slit from close up was unnerving.

"Brya!" the monsterabbit grew excited suddenly. He started vibrating, almost dancing in place. "Brya! Brya, brya, bry-brya-brya! Let's be friends! Are we friends?"

"All right, all right, friends," the redhead grumbled, with dreadful suspicion that dragging this clingy with them would be worse than having Kunou on the team.

"Oh joy!" the monsterabbit shrieked with unhealthy glee, jumping whole two meters up. Then, suddenly, he glomped Ranma with all his tentacles, insectile arms, scythes and whatever. On top of that, he grabbed her face with his 'mouth', making Akane wince in sympathy. "Tasty! Tasty! Must not maul by accident! Ee-he— Yuk!"

His flight path wasn't long but it was twisted like a ball after a good pitch. The pink one tore straight through a tree crown, to fall to the ground accompanied with broken branches on the other side of it. Sprung traps started clanking.

"And. Don't. Joke. Like that. Again." Ranma's voice was more like a growl coming from deep in her throat. "I'll fucking kill you," she added, borrowing Ryouga's customary greeting.(note 6)

"Err, let's go, then?" the pink one asked, rising up. He was a bit scuffed, but his cheerfulness was, unfortunately, intact. There were several crossbow bolts and other pointy things lodged in his chest.

Ranma took a running start, jumped over the death-trap field, and strode away while wiping at her slobbered face. She wasn't trusting in her ability to refrain from wringing someone's neck at the moment.

Akane followed suit. "Do you have a name, at least?" she asked the monsterabbit who got down to all fours, to hop after them. She wasn't inclined to address him politely after all his antics.

"Brya!" he replied, straightening up to switch from a typical rabbit gait to hopping on two feet. "The one and only, brya, at your service, young ladies!"

"No, I..." Akane couldn't think of a way to ask him better. Or did he introduce himself, but she missed his name among his endless 'brya'-ing?

"He's Brya," Ranma stated flatly, without turning back.

"I don't understand..." Akane glanced at her in puzzlement. "You too, now?"

"What's to understand here!" Ranma flared up with indignation. "It's his name!"

"Brya!" The monsterabbit started growing excited. "Brya-brya-brya, brya!" He again 'accidentally' moved closer to Ranma, as if he wasn't aware of the mortal danger.

"Listen, you!" Ranma glared at him fiercely. "I'm a man, got that!" Her roar made birds fall silent, and forced the pinky to shrink back, his ears flat against his head. She added, less forcefully: "This body is of no matter. It's temporary."

"Ohooo-key, brya," drawled the monsterabbit named Brya. He glanced at one girl, then at the other one, rotating his biggest eye. "I got it, dried up and backed off."

"That's wonderful," Ranma grumbled.

(シーンブレイク)

Five dirty, suspicious looking men are making their way through marshy taiga, testing the ground ahead with long poles. Ahead of them, a sharp-pointed pyramid of a transport node is discernible through the haze of chilly drizzle.

"We made it," one says quietly in Russian. "Ah, I'd like to get to a bath-house right now..."

"Hush!" someone hisses. "Stop asking for it!"

"What could they do, even if they knew?" the first one disagrees carelessly.

As if answering him, the black oval of a portal opens before them, a yawning hole into darkness. The five find themselves facing the blond Aryan. The horror of recognition is lightning-fast: the face, the bang, the mustache, a suit strongly resembling the waffen SS dress uniform.

They don't flee in panic only because they are tired and weary, having no strength to run.

"Calm down!" exclaims a fat-faced, unshaven man who remains rooted at the front while others back off. His beady eyes betray slightly less fear. "You won't do anything to us!" he shouts at the Aryan, the sound of his own voice strengthening his courage. He pulls the silvery orb of a token from the man-purse strapped to his belly. "Because we are under protection of the Zeroth one himself!"

"Really?" the Aryan says in Russian, with a noticeable accent. "The zeroth one?" He crosses his arms with an air of superior arrogance, spitting the words out with such disgust one could think Russian leaves a bad aftertaste on his tongue. "Since when does he care for some _sub-humans_?"

"Izzy, do something, he's going to slay us!" someone shouts from the back, panicking.

The Aryan's eyes blaze up with merciless blue light.

"You retarded moron, who asked you to open your tr—" screeches the token carrier.

"Watch out, he is going to—" a man to the left of him tries to warn at the same time.

"Oh, shi—" someone manages to say, his voice crestfallen.

The ubermensch's strike reduces them to bloody mist, proceeding to beat what little remains of the five men into the Earth's depths. The strike is to terrifyingly powerful it sunders the continental crust, shattering and dispersing it like a large asteroid impact. Cubic kilometers of boiling magma rush up from the very mantle, beginning to fill the resulting crater.

"Damnation, I have failed yet again to restrain myself!" the Aryan laments in frustration as he emerges from the fiery sea and straightens his bang. He is quite angry at himself, glad only that there's no one around to see his failure. Nothing is left alive, the boiling magma stretches for tens of kilometers in each direction. "Unforgivable! Until I get rid of this weakness, I wouldn't be able to rise above a common storm-trooper. An unreliable one, at that!" Grinding his teeth, he opens a portal and disappears.

The magmatic sea is boiling, cooling down slowly. A hour later it isn't white anymore, but red, with black islets of solidifying rock emerging here and there. These sink quickly, though: the solidified lava is denser the molten one, which is saturated with gas bubbles not unlike soda water.

A black, sharp point emerges from the red-hot surface. It's the pyramid of the local transport node surfacing, as cool and indifferent to the raging elements as ever. The molten streaks solidify quickly,only to fall off its steep sides. Leveling the entrance with the magma sea surface, the mechanism devoid of intelligence reports working in an off-nominal mode, and that's it. The force field protected the portal, preventing the molten rock from entering. Even now it continues to deflect droplets and splashes of fountaining lava.

One more hour passes, and a silvery ball surfaces, emerging from the boiling quagmire. It has seven black squiggles inside. Then, a couple kilometers away, a second one emerges, this one with two.

(シーンブレイク)

Sea lit with the setting sun, waves were crashing rhythmically against the rocky cliff somewhere below. Beyond the sea, several hundred meters away, a sprawl of rocky islands was stretching into the distance. Their sheer cliffs rising from the sea were crowned with the green of a forest. A black triangle of the pyramid was visible clearly through a gap between the islands back-lit with the sunset haze.

Alas, the waters below were swarming with black triangles of a different kind, much more relevant right now.

Ranma summed the situation in words elaborate and heart-felt. There was no time to build a raft sturdy enough before the dark.

"Sooner or later we'd have to stop anyway," Akane noted, trying to suppress a yawn. "We can't hope to collect all seven tokens in one day. Since how long are we up? It's better to stop now than to make a mistake at the end, just because we were tired."

Ranma agreed reluctantly. Swimming at night through the shark-infested sea would be an elaborate form of suicide: the local sharks weren't just big, they were immense. To reach the other shore alive, one would require a small battleship. Or blasting the fishes with ki charges preemptively, while they are sizing you up. The girls already had the experience, since that one ill-fated attempt to cross a small strait. They were still alive only thanks to the space between the islands being too narrow for the overgrown beast to turn around. The shark only launched them into the air with a parting strike of its tail.

They chose a place for the camp on a wide shelf, halfway down to the water. The velociraptors couldn't fly, despite having feathers, and they didn't look like they could climb a sheer cliff, either.

The girls passed the time until the dark by building a raft. They were lowering tree trunks to the shelf one by one, planning to just throw the completed raft down at dawn. Brya proved to be mightily annoying, but also quite useful: his chest was the source for lots of wire, a saw and an axe. That's not counting his map that allowed them to save a lot of time. Alas, there was no uninterrupted dry path in this labyrinth of islands and peninsulas.

They started deciding who had to stand the first watch.

"Why don't you use the watchdog mode of your contraption?" Brya asked with genuine surprise.

"Watchdog mode?" Akane opened the medallion and started digging through the encyclopedia. "Hm... Oh... All right. It's listed in there. I think I had turned it on accidentally once. That's why it was yelling about the mosquitoes and the T. rex!"

"How comes you know about this, mister pink-n-fuzzy?" Ranma asked him.

In several hours of dealing with him she formed an opinion on him, putting him in the category "mostly harmless". His personality was a carbon copy of these losers from the chemistry club of Furinkan High. They kept blowing stuff up and trying to "conquer" Akane and blowing themselves up in the process with their stupid traps.(note 8) In short, Ranma decided that the brainiac could be successfully exploited to further the team goals. She just had to smack him periodically so that he kept his paws to himself. And she had to watch if he starts inventing things. For some reason, she was sure he'd tinker in circles around those chemistry guys.

Compared to that, the fact that he was a pink mutant rabbit felt quite insignificant. She had to deal with weirder creatures in the past. The only thing that bothered her was the question if he was a youma. Alas, the direct question was met with a proud but nonsensical reply "I am a pink and fuzzy bunny-hopper of _toransuhumanisumu_." What did " _toransuhumanisumu_ " mean, both Ranma and Akane had no slightest clue. The encyclopedia had no such article either. So the monsterabbit's species remained a mystery.

In the end, Ranma decided that he was neither a youma, nor a youkai. His ki was strange and barely perceptible, like that of a normal human. He proved to be absolutely unable to move silently. Judging by his demeanor, he couldn't fight either. Sure in her ability to defeat the bunny with only her pinky finger plus to her hands tied behind her back, Ranma had put the acid-pink one to the back of her mind, paying him no more attention than she would an annoying fly. The speed was of essence! The speed they just lost at a barrier they couldn't cross until dawn.

"..so they tell me," Brya continued to babble, answering her question. "That there's a real Mylonian era _sutarushippu_ ·there. A whole, uncrashed one, brya. So I think, that's some luck, brya! I'll be, brya, a lot of stuff richer...!" Brya sighed melodramatically, his ears drooping. "But of course they didn't tell me that it sits right at the caravan route. I can't, brya, believe I just bought that! So I rush there, only to find that in centuries it had been picked clean. Not even a rusty nut remaining, only bare walls. And what wasn't picked, did rot away. There's too much moisture leaking in through the breaches in the hull... And what didn't rot, did get soaked, cuz it sits with its belly in the sea. And what hadn't been picked, didn't rot and didn't get soaked, resides in the dark, dark depths. There's a real, brya, breeding ground down there. There are such, brya, things dwelling there that my fur stands on its ends just thinking of them! In short, all I got was frustration, instead of _lutu_ ·and _saluveiju_ ·I hoped for. For two whole months I sat there eating only velociraptors. But they taste soooo bad without salt, brya."

Ranma silently cursed herself for getting caught in thoughts. He most probably had told her how he came to know how to use the medallion. Right when she wasn't listening. But she wasn't about to ask him to repeat this. Her authority was barely enough to keep him in line as it was.

The girls unrolled a sleeping bag. There was only one remaining. Ranma ceded it to Akane, refusing to listen to any objections.

"Should we raise the tent?" suggested Akane.

"You have a tent?" Brya perked up.

"What if some cuttlefish crawls out of the sea at night?" Ranma objected reasonably. "It'd grab us together with that tent, packed like buns in a paper bag. No way. The weather is warm and clear, I'll be feeling safer under the open sky.

Unfortunately, her words scared Brya good. He started trying to get closer, bemoaning his awful anxiety. After being shown two fists, one from each girl, he moved away to duck under the very rocky wall, hidden from the world poorly with his chest. Like a small kid hiding under his blanket, Ranma thought with irritation.

Akane set the watchdog mode as best as she could, rechecking it about five times. Ranma tried to help, but it was no use. She'd have to spend a couple hours to get a grip on all this mind-bending stuff. Akane did already have some experience, but the girl was reacting with explicable irritation at someone leaning over her shoulder.

"I should have learned using this thing instead of her," Ranma grumbled under her breath, busy making a small fire and flaying a velociraptor carcass. The knife was blurring in her hand. "I'd do better. But then, who would have been doing all that teleporting to and fro between there and Tokyo?" She dexterously strung pieces of meat onto sticks, putting this improvised kebab over the fire. "Drats, there's just no time for that. Maybe if I skip on sleep?" She glanced at Akane. The other girl was attaching the medallion to the end of a branch stuck somewhat in the rocky wall. "Naw, I'd have to bother her too, I can't do it quickly enough on my own. We will have to go on as it is. I hope she'll manage."

While they were having dinner, the watchdog mode proved to be working. A shrill, ear-splitting siren was followed by a yell about a predatory animal approaching, then a pale beam of greenish light emerged, emanating from the screen. It highlighted a spot of bare rocks.

They thought at first the contraption was glitching, but Brya pointed at a tiny spider that froze in the center of the lit spot. Ranma voiced everything she was thinking about such a kind of "watchdog" while Akane went correcting its settings.

They went to sleep. Akane put her sleeping bag on an open flat place far enough from the cliff edge. Ranma curled between protruding rocks in such a way as to have an advantage in case she is attacked in her sleep. She wasn't trusting that thing too much. More like not trusting it at all.

Akane fell asleep quickly, tired not as much physically as emotionally. She turned in her sleep, let out a quiet gasp and fell silent again. However you put up a brave front, Ranma thought, that extreme race with an extreme massage after it weren't good for our health. She listened to the rustling and an occasional quiet "brya" from behind the chest. A while later, these sounds quieted, to be replaced with a regular sibilation with undertones of whimper. Despite his quirks, Ranma thought while looking at the faraway stars, he's a creature of flesh and blood just like us.

When was the last time he slept under the stars like that? A long ago, during the trip with pops. Even before they settled in the Tendou house. No, wrong, there were a few times after that, on the roof after the fights with Akane. But the starry sky above a city — even such a suburb as Nerima — is nothing compared to the starry sky in parts untouched by civilization.

A more sharp contrast was what the starry sky meant for a Senshi. It was completely different from the one yesterday. It is one thing knowing about the abyss overhead, filled with suns so faraway than nothing would change if it was a black dome with silver nails. It's an entirely different thing when you have personally visited them. When you possess a power that makes all these distances no more difficult than a trip to a neighboring prefecture. It didn't matter that that power was silent now, sealed by an alien entity. The memories are still with you, they won't go away. To the Ranma of today, the starry sky was like a cityscape, when you have some idea of distances, know of places you had visited and of places you hadn't. There was no telling anymore between the knowledge inherited from the past life and the knowledge gained in this one by looking with that _special_ ·sight. Ranma was lying many times looking into the starry sky with eyes of Sailor Sol. She couldn't forget now that this star over there is close, surrounded by planets suitable for life. And that one, over there, will burn out soon, never producing anything useful. Where "soon" meant "when Ranma, and even Crystal Tokyo will be nothing but dust, long forgotten". And in that direction, over there, hidden from mortal sight by tens of thousands of light years, lies the home star of the planet Mau, the homeworld of Usagi's familiar. Destroyed by Galaxia in their home universe and now beginning anew from scratch. But in this universe...? Who knows.

When Ranma agreed to become a magical girl to save Akane, and then the world, the last thing on his mind was how that would affect the night sky for him.

Who could have thought.

And yet, it remained the same. With all the immense vastness of the galaxy, even a thousand lives not enough to travel it all, even with the power of Sol, the cold abyss separating galaxies remained insurmountable. Like the stars before, the faraway galaxies were beckoning with their unreachable mystery. As innumerable as stars before.

Against this immensity that was making the man look like an insignificant mote of dust, the value of friends and those close to your heart was standing out in a mercilessly stark contrast. The purpose of Senshi, from which even death cannot release you, was not a curse, but a gift.

(シーンブレイク)

Ranma felt like she barely closed her eyes when a shrill siren made the two girls jump up. Akane had slid out of her sleeping bag with the same motion.

The medallion was screeching, the monsterabbit squealing. A pale beam of green light was dashing across the rocky platform chasing after something tiny and fluttering. Finally, it froze.

"What's this?！" Ranma asked indignantly as she eyed a cross-breed of sparrow and gecko. It was quaking in fear, a big beetle clasped in its jaws.

"I, uh, think it's a birdie?" Akane replied sheepishly as she scratched the back of her head while thinking that she played it too safe with the detection threshold. The said "birdie" could fit on the palm of her hand. With its entire wingspan.

"Just look at the size! The size!" Ranma pointed accusingly at the hapless animal. Her sudden motion startled the little sharp-toothed thing making it flutter away with a whirr of wings and a lash of its long, feathered tail.

The medallion shut up. Only Brya continued hollering, elaborating upon topics "we'll all die" and "we'll be eaten!" It felt almost like silence.

"Can you make it yell only at serious beasts like bears or tyrannosaurs?" Ranma continued.

"Well... I'm not sure I can. Not without overdoing it. What if it misses a bear."

"I'd better kick a bear ass in my sleep than jumping at each toothy sparrow!" half-awake, Ranma wasn't an example of tolerance.

"On the other hand, how could we know? Maybe this 'toothy sparrow' is deadly poisonous, huh?" Akane found a counter. "Anyway, I don't want to touch the settings. My head is all sleepy, can't think straight."

"All right, you persuaded me. Leave it be." Ranma lied back down, grumbling something about scorpions in bed as a training method.

Akane followed her example, pulling the sleeping bag on in one motion. The stars were so bright here, in the wild... Here is Epsilon Eridani. She involuntarily remembered all the major planets of that system. Also, she noticed that the sky sphere had turned noticeably since they last went to sleep. Meaning they did catch a couple hours of sleep, after all.

Brya eventually ran out of steam and fell silent. There was only a background of crashing waves and tiny insect noises, sounding strange and alien, completely unlike what she was used to at home. Akane slowly drifted to sleep...

..To jump awake from an inarticulate scream of an utterly enraged Ranma.

"What happened?" Akane shouted trying to blink sleep away and at the same time assess the situation. It looked like Ranma was holding the pink one by the scruff of his neck and shaking him violently like a rag-doll.

"Bryah? Huh? Nein! Nicht hurt pnnk-n-fuzzy me! I'm bryannocent!"

"Innocent?！" Ranma growled, pulling him closer to glare directly into his eyes. It seems, her eye was twitching. It was hard to tell in the darkness. "What, then, WAS YOUR PAW DOING IN MY BOXERS?‼"

"Brya?！" Her words frightened the monsterabbit something terrible, making him slip into some unknown language. "Ky yelnng rmbya uhk chaet! Tg-tg nae...!" He started windmilling his tentacles usually hidden inside his body.

Akane wasn't sure at first what happened. Suddenly, Ranma let out a shriek of utter outrage. The next moment, Brya disappeared tumbling through the sky. He flashed as a dark dot against the stars, accompanied by a rapidly fading yell. Then he was gone. Akane was taken aback. Did Ranma lose it so badly that he had killed the annoying traveling companion by throwing him into the sea full of sharks?

Then she realized. The collar of Ranma's shirt was unbuttoned. Obviously, one of the tentacles got where it absolutely shouldn't have. Akane clapped her palms together, lowering her head in a short prayer for the late pervert who asked for it so stupidly. Then she walked up to the redhead to put her arms around the other girl's shoulders.

Ranma flexed her shoulders irritatedly, but she didn't throw Akane's arms off. Then she breathed out, deflating.

"Let's go to bed," Akane suggested. "You can think heavy thoughts in the morning," she said, perfectly aware that in the morning they'll be too busy for that.

"Check the medallion first," Ranma grumbled quietly. "Maybe it's not closed again an' we hav'ta find that... thing again."

Akane walked up to the medallion and started pushing buttons. "No, it's all right," she reassured Ranma.

"That's great," the pigtailed girl said indifferently, curling up at the spot warmed by her body under a rock. "Why the heck did we need him, then?"

"We'll probably never know it," Akane replied philosophically. She looked at the gloomy, curled up husband with concern. "I think it's better for you to get in with me. There's enough room in the sleeping bag."

Ranma tried to protest, resisting weakly. But Akane insisted, pulling her from under the rock and laying her down in her arms. She saw how right she was when the redhead snuggled up to her, as if seeking shelter, ho hide her head in her bosom. However brave front Ranma could have been putting up, she was _not_ ·all right. Especially now, after the pervert — most likely deceased by now — chafed her sore spot. The locked curse was weighing heavily upon the redhead's heart. It wasn't so bad that it was locked. Ranma'd survive such a hardship without much problems. He'd embark on an epic quest, find an ancient artifact or two, and return the status quo. No, it was uncertainty that was eating at him the worst. Why were the curses locked? Would they unlock after the victory over this new, wrong enemy?

Ranma soon calmed down and started sniffing peacefully, falling into deep slumber. It won't be easy, Akane thought, if he remains like this. Ranma was her soul-mate. Were they broken apart, it'd be like two bleeding halves of the same soul. But on the other hand, she wasn't feeling even the slightest attraction to the girl cuddled now in her embrace, tickling her breast with hot breath. Like a sister...? No, much closer. But... She had always been perceiving Ranma-chan's body as a mask. As a mask, a disguise suit hiding her Ranma, her real husband inside. But it's never that easy, Akane thought with sadness, feeling the redhead's heartbeat. This was no suit. This was _his_ ·real body. That could stay like this... forever.

There was one thing she knew with certainty: she won't give up. She'll be fighting for Ranma till her last breath. She didn't let them take him from her: not the other 'fiancees', not Jadeite, not Galaxia. Not Sailor Sol's own nigh-suicidal forbidden technique. She won't let this one either.

(シーンブレイク)

Rising at dawn, the two rescuers caught a quick snack of crisp bread. Or rather crisp breadcrumbs the food had turned into during the hectic yesterday inside its plastic wrapping. This travel wasn't for weaklings or fragile items. Ranma was hoping dearly that the token was more sturdy that it looked. How could you test this? The bag inside her shirt was making her play safe and avoid being hit more thoroughly than usual.

"Heave ho, then?" the redhead asked, sizing the raft up.

"Wait," Akane stopped her, staring intently at the opposite shore. "I think there was something moving on that island. Something pink."

"Something pink?" Ranma looked into the distance shielding her eyes with a palm of her hand. "Wha, him again? No way! Noooooooo!" She almost ripped her pigtail off in a fit of despair.

"Alas, yes," Akane stated mirthlessly. "Let's attach the chest to the raft. He may be a pervert, but leaving him without his luggage would be inhumanly low."

(シーンブレイク)

A crude raft, made of logs tied together with wire, was crossing the strait slowly. The chest was tied down firmly in its center. Akane was sitting on the chest, clutching it tightly. She kept looking around nervously. The sea was calm, but the raft kept being tossed around in the wakes of shark bodies. Ranma was huffing and sweating, working for the two of them. The pole in her hands growing ragged, she was spending more time on batting smaller maws away than paddling.

"Akane, how much to go? I ain't..." **SLAM** "..got time to look."

"More than half the way. And take to the left. I mean, to the right. And we have to— WATCH OUT!"

A maw the size of a gate was yawning from astern, threatening to bite the raft in half like a cracker.

"Bugger! How did it sneak up on us!" Ranma treated the gaping maw to a "Mokou Takabisha". Akane wasn't idle either, adding a simultaneous "Raitsui Dan". The maw disappeared. The raft was propelled forward by a mighty wave that rose from an immense bulk thrashing down below. Akane eeped, clutching at the chest so hard the wood creaked under her fingers.

"At least there's something useful coming from them," Ranma commented as she stood up to continue paddling through this shark soup.

(シーンブレイク)

Finally, they were ashore. They even managed to detach the chest before the raft was bit to splinters. The girls were still harboring a weak hope that, maybe, they were mistaken, and that was some kind of a pink parrot.

Yeah, right.

"Brya‼！ Brya-brya-brya! I was so lonely without you!"

"Get yer paws away! And if you, one more time, come closer than two meters to me..."

"Brya! I assure you, young ladies, it was not what you—"

"All right, we'll talk later. Move it, perv. And don't forget your chest!"

(シーンブレイク)

Akane tried for the twelfth time. The portal did again open into a moist, stifling twilight of jungle that looked exactly the same as it did during the eleven previous attempts.

"Thirty two kilometers." Akane leaned out, tapped the keys some, then sighed. "There's no helping it, the token is again right next to the local pyramid. There's less than a kilometer between them."

"On one hand, it's convenient," Ranma noted. "Too convenient, even. On the other hand, this is the second time. Maybe it's a coincidence, but..."

"A completely natural process, brya!" the monsterabbit piped in. "The transport nodes are one per planet, these are always surrounded by a concentration of... whoever. Any, brya, ilk could be found gathered there. Including the worst villains you could imagine! The vicinity of a node is always a danger zone. Such is c'est la vie, brya-brya-brya. While the treasure hunters, as it was noted many times," he added dramatism into his voice, "do have a stra-ange and illogical habit of lowering their guard as they approach the node. As a result, token probability density function does have a peak there... With a high probability of finding the bones of the token carriers nearby, brya. So be careful, brya."

"Thirty two will do," Ranma said as she headed for the portal. "We'll be there faster by running than by picking a better landing point."

"Wait," the monsterabbit stopped her. "Let's take a look around from high in the air! I know how!" He started rummaging noisily, then pulled some long thing from his backpack and began fiddling with it.

"How?" asked Akane.

"Attention, opening a portal in the aperture four," the mechanical voice stated. "Attention, engaging preventive measures according the safety condition forty three."

The rainbow film of a force field covered the portal opening. Then, an adjacent aperture opened, covered with an identical film. Beyond it, there was a deep blue sky and a green carpet of jungle far down.

"By opening a second portal in half a kilometer above the first one," Brya proclaimed proudly as he hopped to the new portal. Reaching it, he looked out, left then right, careful not to touch the barrier. "Pity this trick is one-shot, brya, and doesn't solve the problem of aiming, not the limitation of not opening it close to the transport node... Here's your pyramid, over there, bryapped on a hill.

"Right," Akane noted, memorizing the landmark. "It's really on top of a hill. And the jungle around doesn't have a single break. We lose nothing if we disembark here. "She strode to the portal that was leading into twilight. Pushing through the force field shoulder first, she pushed aside a huge, fleshy leaf cut neatly by the portal... And then something alive and squirming fell down the back of her collar.

"Ack!" She jumped back into the hall and started squirming as she pulled the bottom of her undershirt out of her pants to shake it vigorously. Finally, her hopping succeeded. Some sort of centipede fell to the mirror floor, to slip away mercurially.

The medallion beeped. Akane frowned.

"Let me guess," Ranma said. "It's deadly poisonous, isn't it?"

"It is," Akane confirmed. "And— Ouch. One hundred thirteen species of poisonous animals in a three hundred meter radius."

"That's why I hate jungle with a passion," Ranma agreed. "You have to be on alert at all times. Gape just once, and you're done for. By some tiny snake you didn't even see coming."

"Bryah-huh-huh," the monsterabbit chuckled pridefully, puffing up in hubris. "Your pink friend here possesses ama-azing, brya, incredible resistance to poisons! I'm not afraid of any snakeses!" He started preening, posing ostentatiously.

"That's good and well, but what should we do?" Akane asked.

"Why?" Ranma replied, surprised. "Cut through it, of course. We just have to find long, sturdy sticks first. We'll be pounding every bush in our way, to make them all fall down. Well, and watch our feet. Come on, open this portal to some forest so we can get sticks."

"And this," Akane pointed at jungle, "is not a forest?"

"Where have you seen jungle where you can find a normal stick?" Ranma replied indignantly. "It's all either lianas, or is too thick, or is rotten through. Any dead wood gets consumed just because."

"Why didn't we think to take machetes," Akane said, vexed.

"Yeah, that was mighty dupe-ish of us," Ranma agreed. "The only thing better than that would be tying them to sticks, to..." Suddenly, she turned around to stare at Brya appraisingly.

Akane lifted a brow. Then she followed the other girl's example.

"Uhh, Why are you looking at me like that, brya?" The monsterabbit grew nervous, backing away involuntarily.

"So you are poison-proof, you say?" Ranma said with a nasty glee.

(シーンブレイク)

"Damn terrorists," Uranus swore glancing at the overworked, and thus unaccomodating, guards who watched around intently and thoroughly. The concrete expanse of airfield beginning close by beyond the glass wall of the terminal was utterly unreachable, as well as the airliners standing on it. "How will we get to the plane now?"

"Better be thankful that they bought our transparent excuse of getting lost in the luggage section," Neptune berated her distractedly, busy with her mirror. "They could have demanded our papers."

"We shouldn't have left the field at all," Mars grumbled.

"How would you find the right plane, then?" Venus retorted.

"It's right over there," Mars pointed at a lone Boeing with a characteristic red crane of JAL on its tail, standing out amidst the usual Russian planes.

"That one is bound for Seoul, by the way," Uranus said, cooling her eagerness. Then she turned to Neptune: "How is it?"

The emerald-haired Senshi just shook her head as she surveyed the world through her mirror like it was an optical filter. No one could guess how that worked: the back surface of the mirror wasn't just opaque, it had a decorative design on it. Everyone else looking in the mirror could only see a normal reflection.

"No," Neptune explained shortly. "I still can't get used to it only showing the past or the present. It's much harder to work with now." She surveyed the airstrip perimeter for one last time. "I don't see any loopholes for now, everything is covered in a very professional manner." She turned to Mars. "And of course it wouldn't tell us which plane we need."

"Maybe we'd get there on our own?" Jupiter suggested. The previous flight had been hard on her. She was a brave girl, but now a mere glance at a plane was making her... Not as much afraid as feeling like she was petting a man-eating tiger.

"Yeah, right," Mars quiped. "Half a thousand kilometers of running, then half a thousand more swimming across the Sea of Japan. At the latitude of northern Hokkaido, I should add."

The weather was cold, but that didn't bother them in their Senshi forms. While they stayed dry. But no one forgot that episode with pulling a truck from an icy-cold river. Their protection was still working in water... somehow. But it was still quite unpleasant.

"Should we appeal to our embassy?" Venus suggested.

"Consulate," Uranus corrected her. "That is if there is one in this city. It may be half-a million citizen big, a large transit node, but still the international traffic is looking stunted compared to the domestic one."

"Mercury and her fog would be of huge help here," Jupiter said with a sigh.

"Don't worry, we'll think of something," Venus proclaimed with optimism. "There are several hours left till our flight!

(シーンブレイク)

"Young ladies, have mercy!" the pink one squeaked pleadingly, an umpteenth time during the last ten minutes. "My paws are falling of!"

"Scythe on," Ranma snapped at him. The bunny's ears drooped. Sighing with an overblown air of suffering, he went on hacking through tropical underbush with his scythe arms. The wet sounds continued, chunks of fleshy vegetation flying left and right.

The girls were prowling after him, watching carefully to not step on a snake. Ranma's feet were wrapped in towels and other rags tied firmly around her ankles.

"Don't worry," Akane reassured. "There's only a hundred meters left to go." She didn't stress, though, that that one hundred was till the token, with six more hundred meters more till the transport node. The monsterabbit was really slowing in the last fifteen minutes or so. It looked like he was starting to tire out.

Finally, Brya hacked heroically through the last, thickest of the green obstacle. They found themselves on a wide space of bare, packed earth. The sunlight penetrating from above giving the underbush a second breath, the clearing was surrounded with solid green walls like a tall well.

In the exact center of it, there was a big boulder surrounded with a ring of huge bones sticking from the ground vertically, like a grotesque fence. The orb of a token was glinting on top of the boulder like mercury.

"This does remind me of something," Akane said doubtfully, frozen in her tracks.

"Yeah, it does," Ranma dittoed, approaching the boulder with caution. She was peering at the ground intently, trying to notice discolored spots or hidden wires. "Many a film about idols in the Amazonian jungle and stuff. The only thing more obvious would be a huge banner with 'trap' written in meter-wide letters." Straining all her senses, she realized she had been watching for the wrong kind of danger. There were no traps, and couldn't be. It was the surrounding forest that was exuding hostility.

"We are being watched," she stated in an overly careless voice. Akane reacted with a barely perceptible eye movement, glancing quickly around the green wall of jungle. "Such sneaky bastards," the redhead continued. "Almost fooled me, even. Brya, run towards the pyramid. You'll need the head-start. Then me'n Akane grab this thing and bolt! She took a demonstratively relaxed look. Putting on "imma dumb blond" mask she started looking around surreptitiously, blinking stupidly with an overplayed innocent look.

Akane played along, acting much less over the top. She went to the boulder casually. Only a master, or someone knowing her well, would see she was ready to attack or dodge in a fraction of a second.

"Erm, allright lala," the monsterabbit replied. He didn't have to act, he was behaving weird in any situation. "We'll, I go then. I hope we'll see each other again. If the head-start doesn't prove to be, brya, too large." He went down on all fours and skipped away in a rabbit gait, his round pink posterior bouncing up and down merrily.

Akane pretended admiring the token as she was waiting for his tramp and branches rustling to fade in the distance.

"Do it, like Indiana how-is-his-name," Ranma urged, keeping a silly smile plastered on her face.

"On the count of three," Akane whispered. "One, two..." She grabbed the token in a lightning-fast motion, already starting to accelerate away. Ranma dashed at the same moment.

They were at the very wall of greenery, rapidly gaining speed, when massive dark forms started raining down on the clearing.

Missed!

Tearing through the veil of green, the girls sped through the green twilight like two lightning bolts, leaving their pursuers far... A toothy maw right ahead!

Akane accelerated even more and dodged an incoming great ape by diving under its outstretched hands as it was floating towards her. Ranma kicked it off-handedly... And bounced back like a ball from a brick wall. She kept her balance, of course, but her forward momentum had been killed. While the dark hulk only stumbled slightly.

"They can use ki too!" the redhead shouted out, reassessing the threat. Noticing shadows gaining on her rapidly, she dashed after Akane, analyzing what she saw on the run. The dark ape did have long arms, like a baboon, but otherwise it was like a huge gorilla bulging with grotesquely oversized muscles.

Ranma glanced up. No, the bottom branches were too high. There was no time.

A dark form jumped out to intercept her, all slavering fangs and grabby paws!

"Fast!" Ranma barely dodged, deflecting one paw away with her elbow. The ape went plowing the underbush after its miss. But there were others coming after it. "And long-armed, the buggers!" These were no monkeys from her homeland's forests. If one such grabs you, it'll take time and effort to get away.

The ground started rising, rocky outcroppings emerging amidst the forest.

"A couple hundred meters more!" Akane reassured her, being glimpsed through vegetation ahead.

"Peachy!" Ranma shouted as she breathed out, more to indicate she was still there and did not fall behind. Were I these ugly mugs, she thought, I'd stage an ambush right over... Aha!

The baboon-horillas started raining down from a small cliff as she was running by its base. The redhead dashed in a zigzag pattern, getting away on pure speed. The apes landed behind her, piling up as they were tripping over each other in their hurry to get her. What was that sound?

The redhead didn't realize at first that she was hearing monsterabbit's constant holler, growing closer with each moment. Whatever organ he was using for speech it was completely independent from breathing, allowing the pink one to holler non-stop without pause or limit. What is he yelling, she thought trying to make sense of his babble. "Aaah-hilfe-aaah-gethimoffame-aaah-immainperil-heeeeelp?" Aha. Here's the pink bunny, leaping like crazy. There's a chest on top of the bunny. And a baboon-horilla on top of the chest! Beating against its pecs and hooting victoriously. Gotcha, pervert.

None the less, she was impressed by his feat of strength. Running so fast while carrying that hulk... Ranma reassessed his abilities. Well, here goes. Onrushing from behind, she performed a simple right punch at the thing's spine. It was like hitting a rock, her hand felt bruised. The redhead pushed with her feet off the black hulk as if was floating through the air, sending it plowing the ground face-first while gaining speed for herself. She had to regain her lost speed, that ape was weighing more than an average bear!

Freed from his load, the monsterabbit accelerated sharply and dashed ahead, still hollering non-stop.

The rock outcroppings were appearing more often, forcing her to meander. The underbush became denser, sunlight reaching here and there, making bushes and huge fleshy leaves grow amok. Ranma was pushing through hoping that any poisonous creeps would simply slip off at such speeds. Akane manifested in the bushes ahead, wrestling angrily against a baboon-horilla grappling her. Ranma couldn't reach her in time to help as a brutal uppercut put an end to the struggle by throwing the thing three meters up. Akane flew ahead again, rumpled and disheveled. The redhead kicked the stunned ape off-handedly as it was approaching the ground. Don't you paw my wife! The baboon-horilla was sent on a flat arc, going further and further away from the steep hillside, tumbling over the treetops far below.

The next three things who ambushed Akane followed in its steps. Here Ranma participated in full as her wife couldn't hold her own against all the three. They set off for their hundred-meter flight already crippled. Even their stone muscles couldn't save them from Ranma's fury. Shouldn't have tried grabbing Akane by her face. And especially shouldn't have tried to twist it off.

At last the girls tore free of the jungle, reaching the hilltop with the pyramid. There was a small clearing at the entrance, surrounded by green foam of bushes. The monsterabbit was there too, looking out of the arch cautiously as he was wheezing, huffing and scratching noisily. He had stopped hollering though, thank the small blessings.

"Bry! Brya-brya-brya! I'm so glad to see you!" His vertical mouth slit was writhing from his labored breathing. A disgusting sight.

"Then cry tears of happiness," Ranma muttered under her breath, straightening her clothes and red bangs. Such jerks, to grab her by the hair. Animals, in other words. "All right, Akane," she said to the girl entering the arch that lead into a familiar hall of mirrors. "Come on, open it. We need a... breather." The redhead herself stayed outside.

The apes walked out of the bushes with a swagger, to form an uneven line. In their minds, the pyramid was a dead end. Prey cornered, there was no reason to hurry.

The monsterabbit flattened his ears against his back as he dashed deeper inside.

"A second." Akane opened the medallion, entering a command. Something wasn't working, judging by her angry sniffing and her key tapping becoming more and more irritated. Ranma couldn't risk glancing back as she was trying to stare the anthropoids down. They were glaring boldly in return from under their massive brows, sure in their numerical advantage. It seems the brutality the girls had shown in dealing with their brethren only made the infernal things more excited. How come they can use ki? It was so unfair. A normal person needs years of training to reach that level.

"Dammit, why doesn't it work," Akane said forlornly.

The things did notice the despair in her voice and perked up. Some especially bold ones started walking forward with a swagger.

"Calm down and concentrate," Ranma growled deep in her throat while glaring into the beady, brazen black eyes. "I'll hold the entrance. Work as long as it takes." She started backing slowly into the arch, flowing from one ready stance to another. She didn't forget how lightning fast the baboon-horillas could move if they felt like it. For now they were just hooting mockingly and beating against their chests as they advanced slowly on the retreating redhead.

"Brya...?" the monsterabbit called out uncomprehendingly. "Why don't you just close the entrance portal? I have done this often in the past." He scratched himself noisily. "It's a thermodynamically closed system and all, but... there's almost a ton of air in it. With even three of us we can hold out in here for several hours. Eventually it'll become hot and stuffy, of course, so I don't recommend sitting more than a hour or two in such isolation.

"Are you sure they can't open it again somehow?" Akane asked warily, looking at he apes over Ranma's shoulder. They noticed her hesitation and grinned, displaying large fangs.

"Young lady, have you learned the theoretic basics at least a little?" Brya was indignant. "A completely cut off lobby ceases existing relative to the outside world as it becomes an isolated microversum. Until you open a portal by yourselves, no one could get you there. You cease to exist for the external world! It would be an ideal hideout if not the tiny, annoying problem of limited air and thermal capacity."

"What if someone else opens the portal while we are sitting in this isolated universe?" Akane wasn't giving up. "The chance is slim, but who knows? Will we be stuck here forever? To suffocate?"

"Brya! Stop spouting nonsense! If the portal is busy, you get connected to a nearest lobby connected to it. Please realize this: all these constructs," He gestured around with his appendage, "aren't even strictly material! Brya! Not knowing such basics...! You were probably thinking these mirror planes are made of some sort of metal. While in reality they are boundaries of spacetime folds surrounded by force fields..." Brya fiddled with a familiar thingy he pulled from somewhere. This resulted in two adjacent arches opening. Akane tensed, waiting for something to leap out of there: the apes were making her nervous. But instead of the expected hostle creatures, she saw... she saw... two identical halls beyond the two arches. In each hall there were present: herself, Brya and the tense Ranma standing in the entrance surrounded by a closing semicircle of apes bulging with muscles. There was one thing even more unnerving to her than the anthropoid things: the two halls were clearly overlapping in space. The distance between two arches was too small for two such large rooms to fit next to each other. Brya walked out of the left arch, his counterpart at the same time walking in through the right one to stand next to Akane. She approached the left arch and leaned carefully in. To the right, she saw... herself, leaning into an arch. She imagined her own head poking from the right arch behind her back. She shivered involuntarily, feeling her own gaze on her back.

"Do you see now? By the way, there's no free space inside the pyramid. It's all filled with machines.

"All right, all right, I believe you. Just switch this outrage off!" Akane demanded. Brya complied silently. "Did you hear that, Ranma?"

"I did, I did," Ranma replied as she backed into the hall. She wasn't liking the stares the baboon-horillas were drilling her with. Too greasy. And every one of them was a male. Scratching their chests with raunchy grins. The redhead shuddered. The apes immediately thrust out their chests, flexing their pecs, and stepped closer. "Come on, almost there..." She wasn't too hot on fighting against dozens of long-armed animals, each almost as strong as her but weighing five times more. Luckily, she only had to get inside the portal plane. "Tkhach'shahs Eet Suht, close the portal!"

"Invalid target," the mechanical voice replied dispassionately. "There are no portals opened by you in the default range."

Ranma swore. The apes tensed, preparing to pounce.

"Just a moment..." Akane called out in a harried voice, punishing the keyboard mercilessly.

The grinning muzzles disappeared in total darkness that cut out all sounds as well, together with the feeling of a living world around. Ranma thought, relaxing, that she'd probably never get used to this deadening silence, insidiously oppressive like the silence of a deep crypt. To this _emptiness_ ·of ki senses. Now she at least knew the reason: if the world was really ending with these walls and there was nothing beyond...

The greenish screen of the medallion reflecting in multitude of mirror facets of the domed ceiling was creating a kaleidoscopic effect not unlike the night sky: darkness full of countless points of green light was stretching into infinity.

Brya started rummaging in his chest noisily. Then he lit up a big orb the size of a basketball that was radiating swamp-green light. The illusion of starry sky had been replaced by a no less phantasmagoric vista of some hazy-green astral space. Now they could at least see each other, though the green light was making their faces look unnatural. The hazy green lights were stretching into infinity as well.

"A moment." Akane breathed out, then continued working the medallion, calmly and methodically. "Wait a moment, we'll find the next one."

(シーンブレイク)

February — October 2013.

 **Author's notes:**

 **1**  
It's how Ranma swears in the original manga. The English translation by VIZ doesn't convey this, nor does the Russian translation by sakura-press.

 **2**  
Believe me, hearing your native speech where you least expect it could leave you dumbfounded easily. Because the first thing you'd think is that you are hearing things. Then, that you are going nuts. And only then will you realize the true reason. A good example would be the ending song of the anime "Fantastic Children". It was sang in Japanese, in a very beatiful voice. Then, several episodes later, they suddenly switched to Russian. In the same voice. All I noticed at first was that I could suddenly understand the words! I really thought I was going nuts, that watching too much anime finally broke my mind! Well, it doesn't help that Russian and Japanese have virtually identical vowel sets, so transition was smooth.

 **3**  
His speech is heavily contaminated with English. Out of ideas, I will simply write it in Japanese transliteration, in italic. I hope this will convey everything well enough, sounding both vaguely familiar and still alien.

 **4**  
When talking Japanese, he mostly inserts his "brya" instead the ending "desu", just like the "cat speak" is formed by replacing "desu" with "nya". And, AFAIK, genuine Japanese rabbit-speak would use "pyon".

 **5**  
She kept her maiden surname due to a silly bet made after certain someone called another someone chicken. You'll know more if I write the virtual, non-existent prequel for real. The probability of which is 5percent.

 **6**  
"Ranma! Buk-korosu!" ((I'll) fucking kill (you)) is Ryouga's favourite phrase that doesn't translate to either Russian or English without the use of cuss words. A somewhat tamed "Die, Ranma" is used in the English version.

 **7**  
Consider this a quirk of mine. I have a habit of using a queer made-up word or two per stoty. The original "monstrolik" is gleefully invalid. The correct merger of "monstr" and "krolyk" should be "monstrokrolyk".

In my older original-fiction story, the non-human main cast uses incorrect plural form for "human" ("cheloveki" is kind of like "humanses")

 **8**  
Characters introduced in the anime adaptation, just like Sasuke.

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— Crystal  
— Orphus users (10 bugs so far)  
— Crystal  
— ryuumon  
— Orphus users (32 bugs so far)  
— Crystal  
— ryuumon  
— Orphus users (24 bugs so far)


	16. Human BBQ

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled**

 **Chapter 16  
Human BBQ**

If you fall into lava, you die. No save.(note 1)  
 _Fire and Brimstone: Guide to Lava, Magma, and Superheated Rock_

(シーンブレイク)

Brya kept looking over Akane's shoulder and annoying her with incessant tips and hints. Useful, probably, but distracting her greatly. Her brain was swelling as it was, from trying to understand the deluge of seemingly important details the mechanism was obligingly drowning her in.

"Go away, not now!" She finally shooed him off. "I'm almost there..."

"They are almost there, brya," the pink one grumbled, pouting. He pulled a massive and gaudy golden squiggle from somewhere, to put its thick chain around his neck. This made him look even more bizarre.

"Decided to pimp up?" Ranma tried to barb him.

"I assure you, young ladies, this is no accessory," Brya replied with dignity. "Well, brya-brya-brya, that's a funny thought... Brya, what were we talking about...? Oh, right. Although I rarely deal with magic, there aren't that many worlds where it works. That, and my dislike for it, brr-rya. I don't like unformalizable manifestations in general... But to not like and to not know how to use are different things. We'd have to go through a place, brya-brya, that is a bit too warm for my tastes. The toothy saurses would be a godsend in comparison. As much as I loathe to waste a rare artifact, I want even less to get my fuzzy fur singed." He tweaked something in his gizmo. "So, I will utilize this flagrantly unformalizable virtualization of reality, which you call magic, to shield myself from environmental vicissitudes. I strongly advice you to follow my example." He twitched his mouth mandibles agitatedly.

"Environmental vicissitudes?" Akane asked in confusion.

"Enough dawdling," Ranma urged her. "Come on, open it. Usagi can't wait."

Brya put his ball away, plunging the hall into darkness. Judging by the sounds, he was strapping the chest to his back. Akane started tapping keys.

The portal opened, and the hall was flooded with scorching crimson light. Burning heat came from all directions at once, making the girls feel like bread slices in a toaster. Lava was boiling and fountaining furiously right beyond the portal edge. The force field was preventing the thick splatter from getting inside, but the lava reflecting in the countless mirrors turned the hall into a burning furnace. It was too much even for their endurance.

"Aah, it's hot!" Ranma yelled, writhing. It was no use: the heat was burning from everywhere equally. "Close it! Close, I say! Tukha... Tkhach'shahs Eet Suht, close the portal!"

"I can't!" Akane yelled back trying at once to type a command and cover her face with her sleeves. "Argh! Why doesn't it work! We'll bake here!"

"Your command close the portal is rejected," the mechanical voice stated dispassionately. "Cancel the calibrating procedure you have initiated using your interactor three seconds ago, or wait for its completion."

Their clothing was starting to smoke.

"Wait!" Ranma yelled suddenly. "The magic! The sun! I feel them!" She rushed to Akane. "Our henshin wands! Hurry!"

"Right!" The black haired girl tore the backpack from her back, and both started frantically digging through it, throwing various stuff out. Many of these things were starting to smolder right away, emanating a stinky smoke. Finally, the items in question were found. Writhing from the intolerable burning heat, the girls raised their wands.

"Sol stellar power, Make-Up!"

"Iris crystal power, Make-Up!"

They stood there on their knees, breathing in relief. The hall continued blazing like a furnace, a low volcanic rumble reaching from outside. The protective Senshi magic was making the heat tolerable, no worse than the mid-day sun in Jule.

Sailor Sol was first to wake from her stupor. Noting absent-mindedly that her gloves and the soles of her sandals disappeared due to touching the floor, she hastily threw their smoking supplies into the similarly smoking backpacks. She and Iris replaced the backpacks in subspace pockets. Iris wiggled her toes staring with a frown at her boots missing their bottoms. There was a thin line of harsh heat circling her feet as if the protective magic had a chink at the contact with the floor. It was tolerable, but the sensation was positively weird.

The girls turned their nasty glares at Brya who was standing aside, looking all innocent.

"I wonder," Sol began, her voice full of dark promise. "Why isn't our pink friend smoking?"

"And if he is so forethoughtful," Iris continued, "then why didn't he warn us beforehand?"

"Brya-huh?" the said 'friend' woke from his thoughts. "I didn't?" He backed away from the sailor-suited soldiers who were starting to loom menacingly, despite their height being roughly equal to his. "I thought I had warned you?"

"If one could call that mumbo jumbo about 'environmental vicissitudes' a warning," Sol narrated cracking her knuckles.

"And the extreme underestimation of the words 'a bit too warm'," Iris continued, impending menacingly on their traveling companion.

"Er, I thought you'd understand such a transparent hint...?" the bunny babbled, folding his ears flat against his back and backing nervously away. "Ouch...! Owie..."

And then he was sporting two lumps on his head, the marks of the beautiful warriors' opinion on him.

Snorting like an angry bull, Iris opened the medallion to start tapping the keys. She was casting occasional glances at the boiling chaos beyond the portal. Chunks of lava, golden and scarlet on their way up, were flying through the downpour of their predecessors, dark crimson. The hall was lit with flickering red light that was making the light blue of her uniform look dark gray. The jewel in her chest bow looked especially prominent, sparkling with all colors of the rainbow contrary to any logic or sense.

"The token isn't far from the local node," she said finally, her voice despondent. "There's no way to reach it from here. We need to find another landing point... Is it bad luck that we located into a crater of a volcano?"

"I see." Sailor Sol picked the bag of tokens up. It didn't disappear like all Ranma's clothing, but slid off her neck in some unexplainable way. The cord strap was intact. She put it around her neck,then shifted the bag back to hang over her square sailor collar. "Isn't far from the node, you say... This whole story is beginning to stink." She glared darkly at the monsterabbit. He cringed even more, rubbing absently at his left lump.

"It cannot be," Iris disagreed. "It must be a coincidence." But she sounded unsure.

"Two times, a coincidence," Sol retorted grimly. "Three times? Someone is obviously hunting the token collectors."

"Do you really think so?" Brya injected worriedly. "It cannot be. It must be a coincidence! Maps show a swamped subpolar forest here... While my research, brya-brya, tells us that this bacchanalia," He pointed with his scythe arm at the riot beyond the portal, "is two, barely three days old. It seems a large asteroid had hit here, like those that cause global extinction events."

"An asteroid?" asked Sol. "Two or three days?" She and Iris exchanged glances as both recalled someone able to flatten a mountain range like a fly. While using only three percent of his power.

"Umm, why such a gloomy look?" Brya started worrying. "I'm telling you, it was definitely a natural phenomena!"

"All right, natural means natural," Sol agreed, wondering silently if the pink one was working for the knight. Was he trying to persuade them in such a crude way that this wasn't his master's handiwork? No, she decided. No need to search for treacherousness where irresponsibility is apparent.

"Do you know anything else about this zone?" Iris asked. "What should we expect?"

Brya hopped up to the portal. Poking some mechanical looking thingy outside, he started fiddling with it.

"Looks like a normal magma sea, without any bryaviations," the bunny concluded. "Only if the strong, yeech, brya, background magic level, which is abnormally high in this world... But that is more like your specialty, brya. As far as I know, background magic rarely brings any surprises." He then added dramatism into his voice: "Unless someone fools with human sacrifi-ice-eeees!"

"Enough antics," grumbled Sol. "So, the only thing we can do now is swim across this magma sea?" She grit her teeth in frustration.

"Don't spout nonsense, brya, don't!" The monsterabbit was deeply wounded. "Such eruptive activity is currently limited to isolated hot spots! We were just unlucky to locate into one. The rest of the surface is not molten lava, but magma covered with a crust of solidified silicates. You can walk across it. Though that's dangerous, brya..." He then looked at the girls with sudden hope: "Can you fly, by any chance, if you are so magical?"

"We can't," Sol admitted grudgingly. While thinking that counteracting the force of gravity requires laughably less energy than, say, teleporting. Why then the Sailor Senshi, beings of open space, cannot fly? Going by what the others had told her, the enemies of the past possessed this ability with irritating regularity. It's like part of our powers were sealed by someone, she thought.(note 3)

"Then you'll have to walk veeery carefully!" Brya proclaimed, digging noisily through his chest that he had put down.

"And you?" Iris asked with concern. "What will you do?"

The monsterabbit put the chest on, twiddled with something at its side... And floated up, dangling on the shoulder straps below the chest, as if the latter was a balloon. Then he descended slowly, despite his furious attempts to twiddle that thing. Pushing off the floor he ascended again, accompanied with him bemoaning at the unfairiness of it: "But I kept a diet of velociraptors for two months straight! And boy, do they taste bad without salt!"

"Well, let's find a suitable spot and go," said Sol. "No, wait. Let's see if I can teleport. Open the portal to somewhere outside the crater."

"All right." Iris started fiddling with the medallion.

The portal opened into gray gloom. Sol stepped out carefully, to sink into ashes immediately up to her waist. A suffocating cloud billowed up around her, adding to the ash flakes floating down from the sky.

"Are you all right?" Iris asked, concerned.

"Mmm..." The redhead concentrated. Then she started straining... Only to fall face first into the gray shroud, disappearing from sight.

"Ranma!" Iris rushed to her side, slipping barefooted on the mirror floor that stubbornly rejected any manipulations with friction. Diving into the hot, soft mass, she dragged her husband back into the hall. The other girl was uniformly gray, her bangs heavy from ash.

"Koff!" Sol pulled free from her arms, staggering a bit. Catching her balance she patted herself over. The resulting cloud of thin gray dust made the monsterabbit back away. "It's no use. My magic isn't working right... I tried concentrating for a teleport, but I only got a headache." She shook her head.

"Only Ahs can manipulate space within its limits," Brya injected lecturingly. "Which means, any portals and teleportations are possible only via accessing the system. And there's no one who could manipulate time, brya. So when you read about time machines, it's _non-_ science fiction. Got it, brya?"

"Got it, all right." Sailor Sol, still mostly gray, pulled her arms back, holding her palms facing forward. "Hey-ho!" She launched a ball of brilliant flame. It streaked out into the gloom outside to blow there with a bright flash. "Well, at least—"

"Idiot!" Iris hit her upside the head so hard that the redhead was slammed face-first into the floor. The pigtail stood ramrod-straight, bristling at its end. "What if the force field didn't let it through? It would have exploded inside!"

"Ungh..." Sol stood up unsteadily. Iris's eyes grew wide at the sight of her bloodied face. "Ca'eful with these su'faces." Grabbing her nose with two fingers, she set it straight with a sickening crunch. "Ki and magic getting annulled at contact and stuff."

"I'm sorry!" Iris squeaked out in panic as she covered her mouth with her palms. "I didn't meant to!"

The front of Sol's leotard had disappeared from the waist up as it touched the floor. The star-shaped jevel with remains of a bow was dangling on the sailor collar between her breasts open to the winds.

"Aw, it's nothing," Sol waved her concern aside. "It'll heal in a minute." She then barked at Brya: "What are you staring at, huh?" just to add with sudden apprehension: "And where did this draft come from?"

(シーンブレイク)

The path from the portal to the desired point led through lava fields in all their treacherousness: jagged rocks were interspersed with wrinkly inflows, the surface was so uneven that an unpowered human would have a hard time traversing here. The sailor-suited warriors were hopping from bump to bump weightlessly. The monsterabbit was being towed behind them on a long rope: his anti-gravitation device had no means of sideways propulsion. The pink one kept losing altitude steadily, only to push off with his feet and soar again. All the while droning how lucky they were to open the portal so close.

The air was dry and hot, like they were in a scorching desert. And that was after their protective magic filtered most of the heat out. It was hard to breathe through the ashes and noxious stench. It was a miracle they could breathe at all. The darkness was deep, almost complete, hiding the details of the uneven ground. On the other hand, it helped greatly to spot any cracks from afar. The glowing fissures were reminding the girls that they were walking atop a thin film overlaying a bottomless magmatic sea. But even the solid rock was extremely hot. The soles of their footwear were holding, but touching a slobbered up finger to the ground produced an angry hiss. Stumbling was ill advised.

The ground was vibrating under their feet, the air filled with a low rumble of many unending eruptions similar to one into which they had opened the portal first. The eruptions themselves stayed well beyond the visual range, only reducing the gloom a bit with their flickering red glow.

Finally, they reached the token... But they couldn't find it. Iris had walked in an inward spiral, then kept walking back and forth for a while, scrutinizing the crunchy rocks under her feet. She scratched at the ground with her white-glowed hand, producing a loud hiss and a wisp of smoke.

"Bugger!" she commented, jerking her hand away.

"We'll have to break it," Sol said, assessing the ground. Her sandals and bare toes were a uniform color of ash. "Point the place for me, precisely, and stand back."

"Careful," Iris said, backing away from the spot _under_ ·which the token was resting. "Don't make the hole too big. Do we have anything long?"

Both were hoping dearly that the token was stuck right below the surface — as opposed to resting on the bottom of this magma sea.

"Here we go..." Sailor Sol aimed carefully, throwing the rope away.

"Hey!" Brya rolled it up hurriedly, because it started smoking on the hot rocks.

Sol launched a fireball, scaling it down as much as she could. The explosion scattered dark shards and glowing splatter, making Brya, jump away up with a small yelp. The molten mass welled up — thick, glowing orange, dimming quickly to crimson. The Senshi barely felt the heat coming from the pool of lava. The molten mass receded at first, then bubbled up and began spitting gooey chunks leaving quickly dimming spots. A darkly beautiful sight for sure, but there was still no trace of the token.

"Has it melted?" Iris voiced a rhetoric question nervously as she opened the medallion again. "Let's see... Ah, there it is... Honestly!" She turned to Sol. "Another one, a meter and a half in that direction." She pointed with her hand.

Sol made a second hole, bigger than the first one. This time it was spitting less. A round shape of the token emerged almost immediately from the magma, dark against the glowing mass. It remained there, barely touching the gooey surface. The lava was darkening quickly in both holes, crusting over with a dark film bursting here and there with golden and crimson cracks.

Sol walked up to the hole. Leaning over it dangerously, she grabbed the ball with two fingers on her second try.

"It's cold," she commented, holding the ball in her palm. "And here we were worrying— Ack!"

The surface broke up with cracks. A big slab Sol found herself standing on began submerging. The orange molten mass welled up splashing right at her feet. She managed to jump up. The slab, some three meters wide and more than ten in length, was sinking rapidly, sliding towards the side that was being flooded with lava. There was a widening crack left on the other side. Unfortunately, Sol jumped straight up. There was no way now she'd land in time. When she touches the ground, there would be nothing but a tree-meter wide stretch of molten lava. Sol felt a sharp regret then, that she only ever trained to stay in the air longer. She knew of no way to accelerate her descent. It looked like their school wasn't so anything-goes, after all. She steeled herself for learning first hand if the lava is viscous enough to manage jumping off of it, and if not, then if the protective Senshi magic could save her from bathing in it. Should she fire a ki blast at the ground below, to ride away on the shockwave? Or would it make things worse by showering her with a fountain of fresh lava?

Iris relieved the redhead from indecision, dashing faster than wind, faster than an untrained eye could follow. To their luck, ki was working properly here. She was able to make the laws of friction and inertia... stand back. Making an impossible, lightning-fast zig-zag, she jumped over the breach, catching Sol in the air and landing with the other girl in her arms. The surface under her feet gave, cracks spreading. Iris ran away, and only then put Sol back on her feet. Behind them, a multitude of slabs was submerging, being inveloped in the swelling orange glow.

"Thank you," the pig-tailed Senshi breathed out.

Both turned around at the monsterabbit's panicked screeching. He was descending, approaching the newly formed pool of fire slowly but inevitably. Windmilling his legs, dangling under his chest, he was hollering non-stop "somebodyhelpsavemeplease!"

"Throw us the rope!" the girls yelled at him in unison.

Brya didn't hear at first, deafened by his own cries for help. He was almost down there when he arrived at that idea on his own. He threw the rolled up rope in their direction. Iris managed to catch it before the poorly aimed bundle touched the ground.

Pulled onto a safe ground, the monsterabbit pushed with both his feet mightily, to disappear in the murky darkness above. Only the end of the rope was left dangling. Catching it, Sol turned to Iris: "Are we heading for the pyramid now?"

"Hmm, it's strange..." Iris stood still for a while, puzzling out the medallion's reports and shuffling her weight from foot to foot. The stone crust underfoot was so hot the protective magic was straining. There were wisps of smoke rising occasionally from under her soles. "Looks like we are in luck. Another token has appeared on the map. It's not far from here." She pointed with her hand.

"Maybe they are all here?" suggested Sol.

They went around the breached area with a wide margin. Then they set forth tugging the monsterabbit on a rope. Alas, he wasn't behaving completely like a balloon. After the stress he suffered, he was struck with a verbal diarrhea: "Someone here think that if they fall into lava,they'd burn instantly to death. But they forget, yes, forget, brya, about the Leidenfrost effect that does have its far reaching," his voice gained hysterical tones, "and hor-rifyyyyying consequences!"

"Hey you, up there!" Sol flung off over her shoulder. "Enough. We can get by without your bloody details."

"When you fall into lava," the monsterabbit continued hysterically, "your skin boils up instantly, forming a steam sheath that insulates your disfigured flesh from the majority of the heat inflow. Insulates, brya! Except your thin extremities, brya, like fingers or tentacles! These char instantly, brya, leaving you with helpless stumps in place of your hands and feet! Stripping you of any hope to get o-oout!"

Iris shuddered violently. She probably imagined, Ranma thought, herself struggling there... Without skin. And without fingers. Sol felt a surge of rage.

"Shut up, now!" she barked upwards, jerking the rope sharply.

Alas, the pink one wasn't affected. He continued babbling on, accompanying the dangerous crunching of the lava crust that kept growing thinner.

"So death in lava in mu-uch more slow and painful than most people prefer to think, hiding from the unforgiving reality behind the fig leaf of false knowledge. Much more, brya. Because you won't burn, you'll be boiled alive, melting slowly layer after layer! Layer after layer, brya!"

This time it was Iris who lost her patience:

"Enough, we understood it already! Be silent!"

Like kicking a dead horse.

"Lava is almost three times heavier than water, do you know that? Almost three times, brya! So when you fall into it, you won't drown. Oh no, brya, you won't. You'll stay lying on top of, like a meatball on an overheated frying pan. And the surface of contact will be much less than the total surface of your body. Much less, brya! So you'll be being boiled from one side. From one side, brya, which is so much slower and terrifyingier!"(note 4)

Sol grit her teeth, feeling a strong urge to punt their traveling companion far, far away. She was mostly stopped by the fact that she had tried that already but it didn't work.

"But you won't be able to stand up. No, you won't brya! Because your first reflex action would be to push away with your hands! So you will lose these first, yes, lose them first, brya! Before you realize what is happening!"

It continued in this vein with minor variations, making the girls memorize all the bloody details they'd prefer to live without, thank you very much.

The monsterabbit ran out of steam only when they reached the position of the second token. Where an unpleasant surprise was waiting for them, consisting of a large breach. The far edge was barely discernible in the gloomy murk.

Visually, perhaps fresh lava looked similar to the solidified crust, but the runny surface was glowing with an occasional crack or swelling. There was a peculiar whisper of crunching glass coming off of it, warning of the molten mass under a thin film of dark rock.

Iris stomped experimentally at the deceivingly dark surface. The sole of her blue boot flashed with a fleeting but bright flame. There was a deep imprint left on the surface, framed with a red-hot, quickly darkening line.

"Don't be a fool," the redhead tried to reason. She felt a sudden chill. "I'll bring it to the edge with a few explosions—"

"Your plasma is hotter than lava," Iris interrupted her. "What if it breaks? The last time we had no choice, but—"

"How can you not see it! We have no right to risk!"

"That's what I am talking about!" Iris retorted indignantly, turning to face the other girl. "If something happens to the token, we lose our only chance to save them!" She turned back to survey the lumpy surface permeated with crimson cracks. She eyed it critically, then shivered involuntarily: the words of the irksome monsterabbit were imprinted in her mind against her will. But that only made her more stubborn. "Don't worry. I have been running across water, even without the Senshi magic boost. This... substance is much denser. Like clay."

"All right." The redhead grit her teeth seeing that any attempts to dissuade her wife were leading to the opposite. "But promise me you'll be careful."

"Of course!" Iris hugged her, and Sol felt the raven-haired girl trembling slightly. "I have no desire to land face-first in lava, you know."

Thank you for the consolation, thought Sol.

Iris sized the ground ahead up, then dashed like wind. There was a track of glowing footprints being left in her wake. Ranma was feeling prickly waves of heat and cold rolling over her. Time slowed, stretching painfully, viscously long. Will she reach it already!

"Brya!" the monsterabbit exclaimed, only now starting to react. "What is she..."

Sailor Iris bent down, stretching her arm towards the surface. But that made her start slipping! Sol felt like a bucket of icy water was upended on her. You idiot, it's liquid, however viscous! The techniques for increasing friction would only make things worse!

Never the less, Iris found a solution. She tumbled forward, raising two flaming fountains of molten droplets that continued to float alongside her, her overtaking them slowly. The tumble wasn't completely right, but the raven-haired girl grabbed the token firmly as it was slowly floating by above and behind her head. This produced an another, lesser, eruption of sparks. She fumbled her landing, almost touching the surface with her derriere. But she managed to right herself, to begin increasing speed again, if slowly. Her feet were sliding, each step producing a burst of red-hot splatter.

Something is not right, Sol realized. She shouldn't be slipping like that! At such speeds even water is almost solid, lava shouldn't behave like that. Even the freshest, molten lava! Anxious, she dashed to run around the breach in a wide arc. To her horror, she realized that she was outrunning Iris! But the other girl should be faster! Where did the speed go!

They arrived at the other side of the treacherous breach almost simultaneously. Iris kept slipping more and more, losing speed, feeling like a fly on fly-paper. Flame was bursting from under her boots with each step, they could burn through any moment. She was twisting, careening, windmilling her legs but couldn't restore her balance. As if she was hexed by someone!

And then Sol realized that Iris was literally hexed. There was a feeling of vengeful malice coming from deep below, a desire to harm every living thing. The sort of evil the Senshi are purposed to fight.

"Magic!" she yelled hurriedly. "Evil! From below!"

The eyes of Sailor Iris, wide from uncomprehending horror, narrowed to slits. Keeping up her fight for balance, she... threw the token at Sailor Sol. That wasn't what the redhead expected!

"Hurry!" Sol stretched her arm out mechanically, not even noticing herself aiming to catch the silvery orb floating slowly through the air towards her.

"Iridescent..." Iris raised her arms, crossing them above her head. She was surrounded by rainbow sparks making the stone on her breast sparkle. She was barely holding upright. But there was very little to go till the edge. "...Aurora!" Iris threw her arms wide. A wave of sparkling haze washed out, making her form waver for an instant like a mirage. Sol blinked, then she could see her wife clearly again, the sorcerous haze posing no obstacle for her vision. The hot film of dark stone covering the molten mass was sparkling like fresh snow, purified of evil. Iris restored her balance immediately, starting to gain speed. A step, an another one &mdash there was no flame from under her feet.

Sol stepped up to the edge, stretching her hand forward. She was regretting that her Senshi magic was so one-sided. Crush an invincible enemy? Easily. There were few stronger than her. But neutralize it just like that...

The surface of lava stopped sparkling abruptly. Iris slipped, losing her balance again. Whatever was coming from the depth, it barely felt her magic. She was magically the weakest of the Senshi, after all.

Sol was forced to jump back dodging the boiling lava swelling up when a crack opened suddenly right under her feet. And right in the path of Iris!

"Iridescent...!" the dark haired girl shouted stubbornly, raising her crossed arms again. Sol was looking in horror at the surface under her feet. It was swelling in bumps, the rapidly widening cracks glowing yellow. The rising bumps were looking like...

Iris jumped awkwardly, tucking her legs in. Her boots were trailing flame. She tried desperately to finish her technique. "Auro— Ahhhh!"

The rising lava turned to be a huge, red-hot hand. It tried to close around the raven-haired girl. Iris managed to push off, going higher with a flip. But not before one of the fingers grazed her thigh. She windmilled her arms frantically, tumbling haphazardly. The rainbow sparks of her interrupted technique dispersed helplessly.

Sol threw a fireball, forming if faster than she thought possible. Then an another one, at the second arm that had started to rise in the path of Iris. Both exploded with molten splatter, the hostile magic negated by the purifying plasma. Iris was showered with viscous droplets, but the Senshi magic should have protected her from this little. Sol hoped dearly it was so.

Iris landed upside down, forced to push off with her hand against the boiling, orange-hot lava. Her glove flashed with a fleeting burst of flame, but the protection held. It felt like slapping dough. There was just a couple meters to go till the hard surface! Iris landed on her feet, bow-legged, already pushing off before...

Her left foot fell through, against all principles of viscosity and inertia. A gas bubble popped, showering the girl from below with molten splatter. It swallowed her leg, almost up to her knee, already collapsing, flowing into the form of a fist closed around her leg.

Sol rushed to her, tearing slowly through the air thick like in a bad dream. All sounds ceased, becoming distant and dulled. Someone's shout of 'Akane!', someone's scream of pain and horror &mdash everything was in the background. Only that sizzling, that infernal sizzling was sounding sharp and pronounced, like claws across one's soul.

Iris felt almost no pain, only the nauseating horror of realization what her leg was turning into. The closed fist finished forming and jerked her downward, pulling deeper. She tried to writhe out, tried to resist, weakened by the abject terror. She tried to pull away, pushing at the surface with her left hand by reflex. The hand sank into the molten quagmire, erupting with flame and black smoke. This is wrong! This is not happening, her mind was trying to tell her, reeling in the face of merciless truth. Then an another jerk pressed her left side firmly into the viscous, melting mass. Pain finally came, crashing through all barriers, sweeping all thoughts away.

"Akaneeee!" Sol did the only thing possible. A twisting stream of solar plasma pierced deeply into the lava abyss, burning the evil away. Then a plasma blast, almost point-blank at her loved one, but there was no other way! The explosion threw the dark-haired girl out of the red-hot trap, showering everything around with fiery splatter. Sol landed in lava, not ever thinking about her open sandals providing no protection for her feet. She grabbed the girl who was flying lifelessly like a rag-doll, the slowly darkening molten lava flowing off of her slowly. The redhead didn't even register the pain as she hooked her arm around the other girl's red-hot side. Leaping powerfully, she was away, her feet a similar glowing mess dimming slowly.

Not knowing where to run, where the portal was, Sol stopped amidst the endless expanse of solidified rock. The darkness was permeating, lifted only slightly by the weak glow of faraway eruptions. Iris wasn't moving, but... But she was breathing, rapidly and shallowly. Sol felt tears squeezing from her eyes, burning like acid. Lava had caught already, forming grotesque solid lumps. It was covering the left side of Iris, hiding... what was left there. The left of her torso, the left arm up to her shoulder, the entire left leg and waist — the skirt was warped with a broken, charred edge at the contact with the crust. The right leg below the knee too, now fused to the left one.

Tears were hissing, jumping in little orbs on the hot ground.

The eyes of Iris opened — wide, with pupils shrunk into pinpricks — to focus slowly on Sol's face. "Did..." Her voice was wheezing, barely audible. "Did you catch it?"

All she could think of was the accursed token!

Sol nodded silently, not trusting her voice. It couldn't end like this! The Senshi magic should heal! She shifted her gaze to her wife's legs, so shapely just a little while ago. She felt nauseated.

Iris tried to move. The crust crunched, fracturing, and she froze, cringing in pain. Then she carefully, using only her right hand, took the medallion from her neck, opening it awkwardly and trying to work it with her uncooperative fingers. "Look... here..." she squeezed out. "I'll... show you..."

"No!" Sol blurted against her will. "Just show me where the node is! I'll carry you! You'll be—"

"Don't be silly," Iris croaked out, holding the medallion in her shaking, outstretched hand. "Take it... Go..."

"I'm sorry to interrupt a moment of high drama," the monsterabbit injected cheerfully. "But, brya, it's kinda..." He hopped up close, to pick at the crust covering the legs of Iris with his chitin scythes. She cringed. "But of cooourse, naturally— Eek‼！"

He hadn't been ended then and there, vaporized, only thanks to Sol feeling empty and drained. But her glare told him enough. Brya hurried to explain, backing away in terror:

"Eh, brya, it's ob... obvious that her skin haven't melted at least, otherwise the chunks of this rock woulda be falling off easily. Fused with chunks of her. And there'd be, uh, blood seeping out of the cracks... and other liquids..." Sol's eyes flashed with some emotion making him screech out rapidly: "She's fine! Finebrya! Her protection held! It's only a crust sticking over!"

"It... held?" Iris hissed, trying to move her legs. She cringed. "Why does it... hurt so much then?" Biting her lip, she flexed her left arm forcefully. The glassy mass crunched, chipping away. Then it cracked, and the arm bent. Iris howled as the edge sharp like broken glass bit into her arm, drawing blood. But she didn't give up. Hitting the rocky stump against the ground, she broke the crust. The girl started to tear its pieces away with her right hand, all the while hissing in pain.

A reddened skin emerged, peeling like from a sunburn. Then fingers: red, thick like sausages, but otherwise practically intact. Iris was growling and hissing as she tore off the remains of the glove baked to her skin.

"Show..." Sol's voice caught from relief. "Show me where the node is. Let's peel you in a safe place."

"The token!" Iris looked into her eyes, and whatever she saw there, she didn't like it at all. She frowned fiercely. "Where did you... **cough**... put the token!"

"Here." Brya obligingly reached out with a tentacle wrapped around the silvery orb, which was now reflecting the reddish gloom.

"Thanks," Sol said, still feeling dazed.

"You had thrown it away!" Iris was livid. She even tried to smack the redhead. "How... how could you!" She failed as her legs remained stuck together, still unable to bend. She couldn't even rise from the ground.

"We were worrying for nothing!" Sol half-whispered, half-breathed out with an immense relief, absolutely not listening. "What a fool I was to listen to this chatterbox! Of course, our magic protects us best of all from the elemental hazards! From fire, cold and the like!" Her face blossomed with a silly grin threatening to crack it in half. "Naturally. How many times during our sparring matched have I hit you with fire much hotter than this lava!" She pulled the bag of tokens forward over her shoulder with a mechanical motion, like a sleep-walker. She replaced the token in there and tied the bag again. She didn't even notice this action making the glossy crust on her left arm crumble away, cutting her skin and drawing blood.

"Are you listening to me?" Iris was fuming. "You had thrown away the one hing that is absolutely vital for saving our comrades—"

"Err, no," the monsterabbit began at the same time. "That's not entirely true. The heat density of such dense matter as—"

"We got off all right!" Sol shouted, interrupting them. "Well, it's all past and done, forget it! Let's go!" She scooped the still restrained Iris and sped away with huge leaps. The pink bunny was left alone, with no one to listen to his indignant speeches: the lava crust behind her was cracking often, making Brya go around the resulting fiery breaches cautiously.

When he finally reached the transport node, he found the girls finishing their work of plucking the stone crust off. The raven-haired one was still mad. The redhead was taking all her reprimands with a fake humility. The Senshi uniform of Iris had lost its mini-skirt, its left side yawning with huge holes. There were barely threads separating them, making one wonder how it could still hold together. The look would be enticing if not for the reddened, flaking skin showing through these holes. Iris was standing with her hands on her hips. She was swearing, and wincing, and cringing, biting her lip, and swearing again while Sol was finishing the work of plucking her legs below the knee. The pieces of rock and charred boots were letting go reluctantly, skin being pulled and stretched until they were torn off with a quiet tearing sound.

"I never noticed how hairy my wife's legs are," Sol joked ham-handedly.

"You are insufferable." Iris sighed at being interrupted mid- accusing rant. She slapped the redhead upside the head slightly. "You are so good at complimenting a girl, aren't you?" Yet another chunk tore off with a nasty sound of tiny hairs tearing. She winced. The hairs were almost invisible, and Akane, even proud as she was of her shapely legs, have never bothered with epilation. Her Senshi transformation, being the manifestation of her spirit, have never bothered with these either.

Now, in a twist of fate, she had to undergo this procedure in a rather extremal form.

"Sorry," Sol mumbled, her voice full of relief and happiness. "I just... I, um, just glad you are alive and well."

"That doesn't excuse you," Iris stated, scratching fiercely at her side. One of the threads making the left of her leotard tore, making the suit sag even more. Considering the presence of their traveling companion, they avoided cleaning the strategic location. Thus, a chunk of rock was now sticking out like a grotesque codpiece, impeding Iris significantly. "You throwing... ouch... the token away like that..."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Sol replied as she finished peeling the other girl's feet. Freed from the alien layer, the skin was starting to heal rapidly, one could practically see the redness and swelling fading away. "To me, you are..." She fell silent, searching for words that wouldn't sound like cheap pathos. "To me, you are more important than anything else in the world.(note 5)

"You suck as a samurai," Iris concluded. "But I love you anyway, even the idiot you are."

"Hey! Hey, look! What's that, out there!" the alarmed cry of the monsterabbit interrupted them. He was pointing beyond the portal. The girls turned to look.

The crust of rock outside was gone. Lava was swelling up, boiling with yellowish-orange heat. But this boiling was strange, with bubbles unnaturally huge and slow. The girls didn't have time to be puzzled, though. The molten mass rose upward, forming a disgustingly familiar huge arm. Its fingers clenched into a fist, then unclenched with nasty crunching sounds &mdash darkening, covering over with a dark crust crisscrossed with glowing cracks, flaking off. Then a second arm rose nearby. Then lava between them started rising in a larger lump.

Ranma thought thered'be a lava giant crawling out, but the lump remained a lump, a small hill of lava without any detail. Even the hands were quite crude, flowing if one looked with attention.

"Iridescent Aurora!" Iris shouted angrily. The rainbow haze rushed through the portal to flow around the ugly entity.

"Hey!" Brya injected indignantly. "What are you doing! I can't see a thing! Yoo hoo, yound ladies! Where are you!"

The girls, whose sight wasn't impeded, saw the spawn of evil sink back, cooling unnaturally fast and covering over with sparkly dark crust. Halfway there, the haze disappeared so suddenly as if someone flipped a switch. The crust flying off, the lump started coming faster, its anger doubled. A horizontal slit opened across its middle, widening like an incandescent maw, its edges connected with red-hot strings stretching like snot.

"Mommy!" The monsterabbit backed away. "Please do something, will you! If the force filter controller does treat this as a creature... Aaah, it did!"

The nearest huge arm reached into the hall, making the bunny scramble towards the far wall. He was slipping on the mirror floor in his haste. The yellow-and-orange maw roared something unintelligible with hatred, molten splatter flying like spit.

"Solar Blaze," Sol finished. The hillock was blown away, its arm smacking down onto the floor to melt into a pool of lava. It made the hall much hotter as the heat was reflecting from everywhere. The lava wasn't cooling. Then it suddenly started flowing out, as if it was lying on a sloped surface.

"I knew it," the mosterabbit commented from the far edge of the hall. He was the only one who recognized the hillock's inarticulate roar as 'Izzy, you retarded moron, who asked you to open your trap' in Russian. "I just knew it. Human sacrifices in places so saturated with uncontrolled magic never end well. So here," he pointed at the lava pool slowly flowing out, leaving behind it a perfectly clean mirror of floor, "we had the misfortune to observe a horrible violation of each and every natural law. The scientist in me is crying, brya! Crying!"

"So it was a restless soul, then?" Sol asked as she walked up to the portal and poked her head outside, to take a look around: the lava had flowed out completely, leaving the floor clean.

"Souls do not exi..." The monsterabbit cut himself mid-word. Letting out a heavy sigh, he continued in such a tone like he thought himself committing a sacrilege. "Well, you can describe it like that. Considering the overall unnaturality, brya... You can assume with acceptable confidence that the properties of the slain people have happened to be superimposed over the virtualizing entity. Thus giving the latter a part of their personalities, resulting in... what is called 'chtonic monsters' in the vulgar language."

"Did you hear that, Ak... Iris?" Sol turned to face the raven-haired girl. "We can't leave it like this."

"And what do you suggest us to do?" Iris inquired grimly as she walked up to her, continuing to scratch herself forcefully. "How would we pull these monsters from the depth? How could we be sure we got them all? A restless soul can be banished if you destroy the item it is possessing. But what if this entire lava sea is possessed? It'll keep crawling out then, unkillable.

Lava started bubbling, erupting with gooey fountains. The dark film was gone again, making the hall unpleasantly hot. Thankfully, they had their protection: you could roast barbecue here. The girls stepped back when huge splashes of molten matter began reaching the portal, flattening against the force field and sliding down to form a lip.

"We don't have to pull them out," Sol said, trying and failing to conceal an emotion that looked suspiciously like vengeful malice unbecoming of a Sailor Senshi. "They came on their own."

"What do you... Oh." Iris suddenly stopped scratching at her healing arm.

The hill that was rising was easy to overlook due to the same reason ships in open sea miss a tsunami wave as it rolls under them: it was so enormous, your mind fails to grasp it at first. Rising further, it was starting to look like a mountain of lava. The girls took an involuntary step back.

"Will you, um, be able to close the portal in time?" Brya squeaked nervously from behind. "If the controller counts _this_ ·as a creature, it'll simply flood the hall with magma! Come on, tell me you are ready!"

The hill of boiling lava, continuing to boil and flow, began growing huge arms along its entire surface. The arms were reaching out, groping blindly, falling apart to be replaced with new ones. The cracks of glowing mouths were opening here and there, to roar inarticulately and flow shut. The hill overall was growing closer, unhurriedly but undeniably. It was looming already.

"Let's do it together," Sol said, taking a stance with her feet placed wide and her arm pulled back at her right side. Her aura reached the visible spectrum, surrounding the girl like ghostly flames.

"Together?" Iris glanced at her, uncomprehending. "But my magic, compared to yours..."

"It's not the power that is important here," Sol wasn't giving up, "but nature. Come on, let's join our powers."

"All right!" Iris took a position to the right and a step behind her. She raised her arms. An aura of rainbow sparks surrounded her, making the girl's figure waver like a mirage.

"Iridescent...!" she began.

"Stellar...!" A light appeared between Sol's palms, so blinding it made the monsterabbit shut his three eyes tight: the hall of mirrors turned into one huge flood-light.

A moment later, two voices shouted in unison: "AURIC JET‼！"

The beam that blasted out of the portal to pierce the lava hill was as beautiful as it was devastating. A rainbow, twisted stream of starfire was making the very air sparkle. The lava hill disappeared under a shroud of brilliant light.

Pity though, this was too bright for mortal eyes, so all the pink bunny remembered were blinding light and colored spots in his vision afterward.

A tense silence descended.

When the splatter finished falling down, there was a wide stretch of incandescent lava in place of the hill. White-hot, it was boiling calmly, without any fountains or other ejecta.

"We... did it?" Iris asked quietly. Both girls were still dazed slightly by the backslash of their combined purification technique. Iris couldn't even get angry, it felt like any negative emotions were blown out of her by a fresh wind. "It was... I have no words. I wonder, if others felt this when they joined...?"

"Something more than a sum of its components," Sol agreed in an uncharacteristically serious voice. "Much more. I'm thinking now, with hindsight, why haven't we ever tried joining our powers before? With each other... and with the others?"

A ghostly voice rolled over the white-hot lava: " _Lyepotah..._ " It felt like many voices sighing in relief, like a soul going to rest.

And right after that, the lava surface began to darken, returning to its natural gamma of reds and oranges.

"That's the answer." Sailor Sol smiled sincerely. "We really did it. Now this place won't be a deathtrap for travelers anymore..."

The lava boiled up. An eruption began — purely mundane, without any supernatural additions.

"..when it cools down properly," Sol finished. Lava was erupting in waves, flying up in beautiful fountains many dozen meters high, right next to the pyramid entrance. The hall did again turn a bit too hot. "Brya," the redhead asked as she turned towards him. "If we close portal now, will the magic disappear or not?" The side of Iris hadn't completely healed yet, so Sol would like them to stay transformed for ten more minutes or so. But she wasn't too fond of staying here to enjoy the close-up view of the eruption: it was stirring too many fresh memories.

"Huh...?" the pink one replied. "Erm... No, brya. The lobby receives... What you can call supernaturality factors from that of the connected worlds where these factors are higher. And it keeps them while isolated. So, even if you close this portal and open it into an anamagic world, your magic will be still—"

"Thanks!" Sol interrupted him. "Tkhach'shahs eet suht, close the portal."

The hall became shrouded in darkness.

(シーンブレイク)

April 2013. Translated April 2013.

 **Author's notes:**

 **1**  
The name of this chapter was taken from one of the levels in Final DooM (1996). That game is so badass it made me fail several exams (because I was playing it the days before instead of preparing for the exams, duh) so I had to repeat my third year in the university.

 **2**  
I couldn't find out how is that part of sailor suit really called in English.

 **3**  
In the manga, the Senshi could fly. Alas, it's totally incompatible with the anime canon I use. The power levels alone would make an early Vegeta or Raditz a suitable enemy near the manga end.

 **4**  
I do not hold myself responsible for the language being violated in the direct speech by psychos.

 **5**  
Sailor Moon is like that too: her friends are more important to her that the entire world. She could even turn her back to the enemy if something really bad happens to them.

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— ryuumon  
— Crystal  
— OSMQEP  
— Orphus users (29 bugs so far)


	17. Forest of No Return

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled**

 **Chapter 17  
Forest of No Return**

Finally, Iris stopped scratching in the dark and let out a sigh of immense relief. This meant that all her burns had healed. The medallion screen lit up, tapped keys sounding. Soon a portal opened, flooding the hall with daylight. The heat was sharply replaced with coolness.

Sol walked up to the portal, to take a look around. There was a steep mountainside stretching down. The air was thin and delightfully cold. A cloud layer was stretching far below. The redhead carefully poked her finger through the portal. With a quiet pop, her entire left glove disappeared, crumbles of rock stuck to it falling down. Half a second later the golden bracer disappeared as well, making the girl step back hastily to avoid striptease. A pervert on the team and all that.

"The lucky streak couldn't have lasted forever." She dropped her transformation with a sigh, turning back into Ranma. Busy with various thoughts, she realized too late that she had performed a striptease anyway. About one second long. It could have been worse if she wasn't standing with her back towards him!

"What's with this thing!" Iris exclaimed with indignation hitting the keys.

"What? Is something wrong?" ready to step out, Ranma turned around to face her.

"It's the stupid loop, not closed again!" Iris retorted angrily, thinking that they could not reach their goal with such an unreliable guide. She was becoming disheartened, she didn't even have strength to be angry at the unreliable mechanism.

"Brya-huh?" The monsterabbit grew interested. "Young ladies, if—"

"Hey!" Ranma's worried exclamation interrupted him. "What the...?" The redhead was looking somewhere to the side, in the direction hidden from them by the portal edge. "Whoa, that's wild!" She jumped back inside. "This is no mountain. It's an anthill!"

"An anthill?" Iris asked with disbelief, distracted from a stream of gloomy thoughts and thus confused. "What anthill?"

"Don't spout nonsense, don't!" Brya was indignant. "The strength of materials alone is enough to disprove this ridiculous notion! An anthill of such size would crush itself with its own weight! And that's not taking into account the purely biological impossibility! The size of insects is strictly limited by the imperfection of their respiratory system. Even at partial pressure of—"

"Tell it to _them_!" the redhead interrupted him, pointing down the slope.

There was a... rock avalanche coming? Iris realized with sudden horror that the gray mass rolling uphill against the force of gravity was made up of ants. Of huge ants the size of horse. They were looking small only due to distance. She started tapping the keys in panic, mistyping. An ugly gray head poked into the portal, adorned with huge mandibles and long, fluffy antennae. Then an another one. Some loners came from behind.

Ranma quickly punted both ants away sending them tumbling down the slope. The gray avalanche was swiftly approaching, mandibles snapping. The ants were coming, thousands of them!

"Shahs Khe Eet, close the portal!" Iris yelled, coming to her senses.

"Didn't have to dance this time," Ranma commented with some disappointment, invisible in the darkness.

"I don't understand," the dark-haired girl said dejectedly. "Why can't I open the portal directly to the token? There are two hundred kilometers from that anthill to it!" She was sounding frustrated. "It's the first time when the token is not even close to the transport node, but still it doesn't work! Am I doing something wrong? Or is this mechanism so idiotic?"

"Huh?" Monsterabbit stopped his offended babbling about biological impossibility and desecrated strength of materials. "Haven't you forgotten, by the way, that you are trying to vector _inside_ ·a world from a transport node _not belonging_ ·to it? I admit, in some circumstances this could work. But with such hefty ryu-metadistances as we have now, interference levels are just horrible, brya. Leading to scattering of a couple hundred kilometers. And that's the easy bit, brya!"

"What should we do, then?" asked Iris.

"Brya! They have to ask!" the pink one puffed up in indignation. "Of course you have to go to that world's transport node. And open the portal to the token from there."

"But that node is on the other side of the planet," she objected, confused.

"And so, brya?" All three eyes glowing in the dark stopped swiveling to glare at her. "How do you think the distance _inside_ ·the world is related to the quasi-distance _between_ ·worlds? Huh, brya-brya-brya?"

"All right." Iris sighed. "I'll trust your word." She frowned as she started typing a new command in. "So we have to land as close to the pyramid of that world as we can..."

(シーンブレイク)

Finally. Finally her titanic efforts bore fruit. Ami yawned loudly, so tired she couldn't even care for proprieties. In front of her, the portal controller medallion hung suspended in a screw clamp, glowing dull green. There was a mess of hair-thin black lines writhing on the screen. A TV camera aimed at it was somehow transforming this into a no less incomprehensible mess of color spots on the screen of a large studio monitor. There were only three or four colors in it.

"Ready?" an operator asked with confusion. He was one of many that volunteered from the national TV channels. The legendary Mizuno Ami didn't need so many helpers, but it was he who received the honor. "There are only spots of colo—" Suddenly, as if a veil was lifted from his eyes. The picture fell together in his mind like a puzzle, and he saw a form of a girl in the splashes of pink, lettuce green and black, curled up on a thick tree branch. "Oh. I'm sorry," he hurriedly corrected himself, embarrassed. "Then this should be... Tsukino Usagi?"

"It's doubtlessly her!" Ami confirmed barely suppressing yet another yawn. "Help me establish connection... The Senshi must see this as soon as possible, but this zone is opaque to the mystical carreir.

They were in a military tent erected inside the crater left by the late wannabe-demon's portal. Ami was uncomfortable setting her lab inside the zone that could become ground zero of some alien invasion at a drop of a hat. The JSDF brass wasn't comfortable with this either. But there was no helping it, she couldn't risk removing the medallion out of the confines of what was essentially a beachhead of Ahs on Earth.

Listening involuntarily to the noise of a more permanent prefab shed being erected close by, they kept tuning and trying until they managed to establish connection. It was only thanks to Mercury's previous work on cross-breeding technologies that allowed the magitek devices understand the banal VHF.

Ami could barely hear the Senshi through static. It turned out the five wayward warriors were sitting in a luggage compartment of a plane that was approaching Tokyo from North-west. The plane hull was a good shield for the radio waves, so Ami suggested they wait until landing.

But the girls, overjoyed at the news of their comrade being alive and almost found, demanded to be shown her immediately. Even if they could barely see it. They clamored, not letting Ami put a single word in. She had to abandon any attempts to explaining it to them how to connect their communicators to the video feed without losing sound. Overriding their control remotely — it was too long to explain anyway — she sent the picture in the plain TV format. Thankfully the military provided her with enough spare frequency ranges. As a result, three communicators were translating the picture, with the remaining two keeping connection to Ami.

After enough aahs and oohs, they started asking her to show them the surroundings. Controlling the "invisible camera" wasn't easy, but switching it to wide-angle was relatively simple. It was then that they had an unpleasant surprise. At first, they took the black spot at the base of the tree for its shadow: the picture was quite unusual, it was hard to discern details in the mess of spots.

Then realization dawned slowly: this shadow was wrong, too big for such a thin trunk. And then the "shadow" twitched its ear and rolled to its other side. The joyous clamor from the crackling radio cut off.

Ami kept fiddling with settings. The picture disappeared for a couple minutes, then returned black and white, in five or six shades of grey. It was now a bit easier to discern details. Rotating the 'camera' around they took a good look at the beast lying under the tree. As a result, their mood plummeted further. The brutal cross-breed of a boar and an alligator the size of bull obviously wasn't loitering down there for no reason.

Wild guessing began of what could Usagi do and for how long was she sitting in that tree, and would Ranma and Akane make it in time before she falls from hunger and thirst. They kept at if for half an hour. Watching the slumbering beast grew boring quick, so Ami switched the view back to her friend, closing up on the sleeping girl's face. It was noticeably drawn, visible even through the half-abstract mess of discrete gray shades. A blissful smile was gracing the involuntary Robinson's face. "She is probably dreaming of ice-cream," Venus assumed.

Finally, Usagi began to wake up. Shhe shifted, then blinked slowly awake. The bliss on her face was replaced by sour resignation.

To not miss something, Ami switched the 'invisible camera' to the general view. The blond, meanwhile, cringed clutching at her stomach. Her comrades in the plane underbelly echoed with sympathetic gasps.

Then Usagi looked down leaning from the branch precariously. To everyone's surprise, instead of the expected fear her face reflected a mix of desire and predatory excitement. Freezing to nigh motionlessness, she slowly reached into the collar of her blouse as if trying to not make a noise. She pulled out some flat disk the size of a plate. Ami closed up on it, but it was impossible to tell what it was. The mysterious disk remained a round black spot without discernible details.

Meanwhile, Usagi pulled a hand holding the disc back, as if she was going to throw it. Her lips were moving.

"Moon tiara action," Mars commented suddenly.

She was right! Everyone suddenly recognized the situation as something painfully familiar. The disk was the size of the Moon Tara's combat form. But where did she get it in civilian? And why was it black? There were no answers.

With a sharp motion, Usagi threw the black disk down. A second later, her face bloomed with a predatory grin. "Yatta," the Senshi read her lips clearly. Usagi hurried to climb down. Twisting awkwardly, she lost her grip and, with a soundless yelp, flew down towards six meters of free fall and a huge predator!

Covered in cold sweat, Ami drove the viewpoint down, accompanied by her friends' anguished shouts. Down there... There was a definitely alive Usagi, if favoring one leg. Which didn't prevent her from performing a primeval victory dance around the strangely motionless hulk.

"Am I hallucinating," Uranus asked in shock, "or have she just hunted?"

"If that's really her tiara," Venus replied, "you can down an elephant with it. A terrific thing."

"While Meatball Head armed with a Frisbee is a force to be reckoned with," added Mars. "She can hit bulls-eye even after rebounding it two or three times."

"You are pulling my leg!" Uranus didn't believe her.

"It's like her whole reserve of dexterity went into that thing," explained Mars. "That's probably why she's so clumsy. But I fear to think of giving her a chakram. Xena doesn't even compare."

"And so pride comes before being hit with the thing," Venus said, violating a quote from 'Heike no Monogatari' terribly. "Like a passing nightmare it hits bulls-eye."

A collective heavy sigh followed.

Finishing her dance, Usagi did again clutch at her stomach. Pulling hard, she managed to dislodge the black disk from the beast's neck. She then started chopping at the bull-sized leg, using the same disk. The girls were sighing in compassion.

Finally, Usagi completed her work of a dropout butcher. Tired and splattered from head to toe, she lifted the week worth of meat onto her back — "bet she'll devour that in two days?" said Rei — and trudged away swaying under the weight. There was some sort of overload rising in the medallion, so they had to cut the cinema show short.

But they now knew the most important thing: Usagi was all right.

They should invite Mamoru for the next séance. They had been keeping him in the dark, to spare his frayed nerves.

(シーンブレイク)

Iris was growing weary of the countless attempts to locate closer to the local pyramid: she kept getting distances close to a hundred kilometers. On top of this, every damn time the portal opened into dark, moist twilight of dense jungle.

So when she suddenly got thirty, and an open, well lit platform, the dark haired Senshi reacted to it with too much enthusiasm. She was detransforming into Akane while already running towards the portal. The shredded remains of her white leotard with a blue pleated skirt disappeared vanishing into thin air like a mirage. A second later, her regular clothing materialized: the rough camo jacket, the voluminous backpack, camo pants and heavy ankle boots with ribbed shoes. But Akane jumped out too fast for the transformation to complete before she was in a world denying this kind of magic. Her left boot materialized in the air behind her back, to fall with a dull thud onto the mirror floor of the hall. Akane stumbled, stepping suddenly with a bare heel on slimy stones.

"Hey, hey, careful!" the redhead called after her wife as she picked the boot up and followed the other girl. "If you keep this on, you'd forget to detransform altogether, and get a into tight spot bare-assed." To be honest, she wanted to say she was worrying for her spouse, and ask her to be careful. But... Still strung up, she let her mouth run on atopilot. Trained for completely different things, it played a dirty trick on her. I was a fool, Ranma thought, to think that saying 'I love you' is the hardest thing in the world. She mentally slapped herself. Voicing constructive criticism is even harder.

Akane glared at her fiercely, then tore the boot from her hands without saying a word and started donning it while jumping on her other foot. Ranma sighed heavily, feeling like a total jerk.

The monsterabbit hopped out to join them. The portal closed with such a loud pop, like a whip. The pink one twitched his ears nervously, then munched with his mandibles, and finally asked a sacramental question: "What is this place, brya? That's some forest. I hope it isn't swarming with toothy saurses?"

Ranma took a look around as she silently berated herself for inattention. You can't just stand heedless like that after landing in an unfamiliar land! However burdened you are. She looked around, then up, and up, and up... She gaped from surprise commenting: "Whoa!"

Titanic, impossible trees were rising around them, gradually disappearing in a haze filled with greenish light that hid the crowns from view. The trunks themselves were almost invisible under layers of giant lianes snaking around them in a chaotic weave and connecting the trunks in green hanging arches like bridges sprouting beards of green. Together with the prominent vertical ridges on the tree trunks, this was turning each ur-three into a complex labyrinth of deep, dark recesses, real caves framed with caps of puffy green and beards of roots from the lesser lianes. The scale of this forest was so unbelievable that one's mind was refusing at first to recognize the green caps covering the snaking lianes and the protrusions on the tree trunks for what they were: not moss, but growths of normal-sized bushes and trees.

The girls walked up to the platform edge. It turned out to be the top of a high, steep pyramid. Its lowest terraces were shrouded in dense fog. There was a green chaos of jungle showing barely through it. A normal jungle which trees were playing the role of grass in this titanic forest. The air was choke-full of swamp fumes rising from down below, making breathing hard even up here. Their clothing was already damp in the over-saturated air, sticking to their bodies unpleasantly. There was many-voiced hooting, shrieking and chirping coming from the jungle below. In one place, the tree tops barely discernible through the fog were swaying violently as if something big was moving there, much bigger than an elephant.

"For how long should I suffer this travesty, brya‼！" the monsterabbit cried out as ke kept surveying the titanic trees. "Poor, poos strength of materials! Everyone is desecrating it! There couldn't be, just could not be such trees! They should have collapsed long ago under their own weight!" He stared at the kilometer-high plants challengingly, as if expecting them to start toppling, ashamed of their wrongness.

The trees continued towering in the perspective-shrouding haze. Ranma, her head raised high, was surveying the network of lianes with a critical eye. The lianes were thick enough to grow over with trees and bushes shrouding these immense hanging arches like green foam. Higher up, on the very edge of perception, there were some birds of pterodactyls circling like black dots around one of the 'suspended bridges'.

"It's because of _chi_ ," she explained absent-mindedly without turning to him. "I can barely feel it, because it's saturating everything here, it's almost like being flooded. Just like us using our ki to expand the limits of what we can do, these trees... This power is so freakishly strong it's amazing! How much unspent natural energy does this world have? It's almost like magic on its own... Maybe it _is_ ·magic of sorts..." She fell silent, deep in thought but continuing to scan the lianes that hosted whole mini-jungles and the trunks akin to cave-ridden bluffs.

"Chi?" the pink one suddenly flattened his ears back. "Natural magic?" He started glancing around nervously.

An annoying, repetitive bleeping started coming from the medallion in Akane's hands. The short-haired girl kept frowning more and more as she was looking at the screen. Soon, her jaw muscles started tightening. Gritting her teeth she quashed a button, cutting the annoying sound off.

Brya hopped up to the edge of the platform with nervous fussines. Then to an another one... Then he jumped up, as if he was stung, yelling "Oh disasteeeer!" with such mortal anguish in his voice that Ranma felt her skin crawl. Panicking, he tried to hide in his chest. Of course, he failed as the chest was full. The trembling monsterabbit's body was left sticking outside, a living illustration of the anecdote about ostriches sticking their heads in sand.

"What's wrong, pinky?" Ranma inquired worriedly. She wasn't liking the fact that the natural energy saturating the very air here was jamming all her ki senses. She was apprehensive of the possibility that her danger sense could be jammed as well.

"Oh, disasteeer!" the monsterabbit howled trying now to hide _under_ ·his chest, which looked even more stupid. "We are done for! Finished, deep-six'd and totally totaled!"

"Why is that?" Ranma asked feeling a pang of fear. However nuts their traveling companion was, he wouldn't panic unless faced with a direct danger. "What's so dangerous here? Come on, spill it, _hentai bakemono_. Or else. I'm not goin'ta forgive you another 'a bit too hot'." She walked up to look down and check what had frightened him so much. But there was only the side of the pyramid, slightly less steep than the three others and with remains of steps. There were two half-crumbled statues of ants just below the flat top on which the travelers were standing. The bottom part of the incline was torn apart by a giant liana growing out of it to rise in a flat arc towards one of the immense trees. The liana was barely discernible at its base against the mist-shrouded jungle.

"That's the thing! Nobody knows!" Brya made scary eyes. "Only one thing is known: this is the world of no return!"

"What do you mean, no return? Stop pussyfooting." Ranma glared at him crossing her arms.

"Well, brya... It's not _entirely_ ·true. Sometimes, people come back... But most of those who ended up here, have never returned! Not even their bones were found..." The monsterabbit again flattened ears against his back. "But what is most dreadful, those who did return haven't found here anything _that_ ·dangerous! Well, the local flora and fauna are dire, all right. But not enough to vanish three hundred men in power armor, with such reserves of dakka that they could've vaporized even this giant forest up to the horizon. But such things have happened, not just a few times. Armies were disappearing without a peep. And there was not even a rusty nut left of them! Well, I can see the ants disposing of bodies, together with all the equipment. But something had to kill them prior, right...? So!" Brya moved uncomfortably close, gesticulating dramatically with his chest paws. Ranma made a step back. "This world harbors some terrible, de-eadly mystery!" His voice gained ominous prophetic overtones. "Why do people disappear without a trace?" He hopped up to Ranma putting his scythe arms on her shoulders for better dramatic effect. "It's a mystery shrouded in enigma-a-a...!" he finished in a tone of sepulchral foreshadowing. Then he was sent on a short flight ending with him almost sliding off the pyramid.

"If you don't stop pawing me, you'll _surely_ ·never return from here!" Ranma foreshadowed in turn as she was turning away from the monsterabbit clutching at the edge. Unlike him, she managed to sound _really_ ·ominous. "Akane... How are you doing? Got these... nav-points?"

"What sort of curse is this!" the other girl growled with hints of hysterics in her voice. She was glaring at the screen like she wanted to grind the unruly mechanism to dust. "I was a fool to think I made a nice short-cut. There's only thirty kilometers from here to the local pyramid. Yeah, in a straight line." She surveyed the jungle below shrouded in dense fog and even deeper gloom.

"Thirty?" Ranma asked with doubt. "I think it's much closer that we managed till now. However, thirty kilometers through such forest..." She eyed the surrounding scenery critically.

"Why can't it just connect nodes directly?" Akane pouted. "We'd reach our goal in half an hour!" She stared at the screen. "Now we have to tear through hostile land again risking our lives. It'd be easier to travel two hundred kilometers through mountains than thirty through this jungle! This thing," she shook the medallion, "counted sixty thousand species of poisonous snakes alone!"

"Thirty is fantastically close when you enter from a different world removed at such quasi-distance," Brya objected weakly. "Young ladies, you have pulled one chance in a million."

"Yes, but it's raving again. It won't even show the local transport node on the map!" Akane held the medallion out to show him the screen. "It's either the non-closed loop again, or some complete nonsense."

The black letters on the glowing screen read "Unacceptably high temporal noise amplitude approaches zero!"

"Brya-huh?" The monsterabbit stared at the screen, his ears drooping again. Not a good sign, Ranma thought.

"It won't work however I try," continued Akane. "I even tried to look it up in the encyclopedia! There's nothing there for leading hyperloops nor for these messages. It seems like complete gibberish."

A tense silence followed. The titanic forest was still towering around them like they were mice on a tree stump, not humans on a pyramid the size of a twenty-story building. Thousands of dark recesses in the mess of liane-entangled trunks were silently staring back, threatening with yawning unknown. The monsterabbit was harrumphing and scratching his head, so no help here.

"We could go back," Akane suggested not believing herself that there was sense in such course of action, "and search for a better landing spot. But as I noticed while trying to find a good spot, the local transport node is surrounded by jungle from all directions. It seems we have no other choice other than cutting blindly through ticket where poisonous things rain on your head while you can't see what's five meters ahead. One could stumble onto something like a pack of ants or a rabid triceratops like that. We couldn't even tree-hop. I can see even from here that the branches are too thin. Probably slippery too."

"Yeah, that's not counting it's most probably swamped down there," Ranma agreed as she picked up a weighty rock to throw it down. She listened. There was a crunch of branches followed by a clear splash. "No, it's not jungle. It's more like mangrove. We'd have not tear but swim through it. While beating off gators and worse things that try to crawl up your ass. No." She lifted her eyes towards the invisible sky. "We will not go there. We won't go back, either. There's a third path." The redhead pointed at the web of giant lianes above stretching in all directions to disappear in the hazy distance. "One such whopping liane begins right under our feet. We'd still have to tear through bushes, and climbing these trees will take time, but—"

"They appeared!" Akane interrupted her with a joyous shout. "The nav-points, scores of them!"

"Just like that?" Ranma glanced at the medallion suspiciously. But she kept her thoughts to herself.

"Yes!" Akane was re-invigorated. "There are so many of them..." She started fiddling with the contraption while swearing under her breath. "The buggers don't fit the screen. But every one does have elevation denoted. It's different for each point."

"So we'll be climbing like monkeys then." Ranma nodded looking all wise and philosophical.

They ascended the very steep, crumbling stairs overgrown with slippery moss. The liana tearing out of the pyramid was wide as a bridge, resembling a haphazardly woven rope of smaller lianes, one to two meters in diameter. In other words, there was no even ground on it. There was a chaos of bumps and recesses instead, often on the magnitude of the girls' height. It was covered with a treacherous blanket of creeping stalks, slippery fleshy leaves, stupefyingly fragrant orchids and many other things of green, to the point of making one dizzy from looking at this overabundance.

"We should jump," Ranma concluded after they made the first fifty meters climbing and slipping.

"Jump?" Akane echoed, doubtful. The air down here, at the very treetops, was so fusty it felt like breathing miasma. It was making her head heavy and her thoughts jumbled. "It's too easy to slip here. And then you fall right into the swamp." She pointed at the jungle below. "You'll suffocate from the fumes alone, even if you won't impale yourself on something or be eaten by alligators."

She delicately avoided mentioning such an insignificant detail as her complete inability to swim.

"Don't fret." Ranma grinned smugly. "I prepared some gardening tools beforehand!" Showing off like a circus magician, she produced two pairs of kunai.

"And how will these help us?" Akane asked eying the thick, rhombic blades, their handles wrapped in fabric-based insulation tape ending with rings.

Ranma twirled a kunai balancing its tip on her finger. Then grabbed it by its handle to slam it into the wood of a bump under their feet.

"Claw hold."

"Oh, I see!" Akane let out a sigh of relief as she snatched two kunai thrown by the redhead. Grabbing them comfortably, she sized the wood under her feet up, then slammed one into the liane. Sharp but thick, the gardening tool didn't penetrate deep as the wood was incredibly hard. But it was enough to hold. Akane beamed with a smile.

"Oooh, crampons-clutches!" Brya approved, having catched up with them. "And I have this!" He lifted his foot that had a frame with three sharp steel hooks fastened to it. "And this!" Showing off, he slammed his chitin scythe next to Akanes' kunai.

"Good," she replied with pointed politeness. "You won't be slowing us down, then." She yanked the kunai out and leaped after Ranma who was already heading forward.

Brya yanked his scythe out too... Or tried to... He started fretting and fidgeting, jerking frantically at his appendage stuck fast in the wood.

"Don't leave me-e-e-e!" his mournful cry rolled over the liane. But the girls were far enough to feasibly pretend they haven't heard him.

(シーンブレイク)

"Now we're going to land for sure," Mars noted listening to the changed sound of jet engines. Then she looked at Venus and added, almost pleadingly: "Mina, do us a favor. _Don't_ ·repeat that in Narita. It's our home turf, we'll come through regardless. Two times you got off easy. Be a dear, forget it."

"What? I didn't do anything!" the blond replied making exaggeratedly-innocent eyes.

"Two...?" Jupiter's eyes widened in sudden realization. "Are you implying that that was no transformation failure?" She turned to face Venus. "You did that on your own will, _deliberately_...? And..." She facepalmed. "And in that Habarofusuku you did it again...? Mina-chan..."

"Yup." Venus nodded, her narrowed eyes glinting. It was dark to see in low light, but it looked like her cheeks gained pinkish hue. "But they freeze so funnily..."

"Are you serious?" Uranus turned to them, staring at Venus.

"Stop undressing her with your eyes." Neptune elbowed her. "Look into my eyes. Good. Don't forget, Venus is avatar of love. And not the platonic sort."

"No, I can understand, honest," grumbled Mars. "But you have to keep the reputation of your comrades in mind. Our uniform is perfectly balanced on the edge between decent and brazen." She unthinkingly rubbed her long, shapely leg against her other one. "What you did is called debasing."

"Mmm..." Venus suddenly turned towards her and stared into her eyes, making the raven-haired girl shift back involuntarily. The stare was that intense. "Try it yourself. Then judge. I'll teach you how."

Mars froze with her mouth open for a rebuke.

"Mi-na-ko..." Jupiter groaned, starting to blush herself. "Enough, stop going over this."

"That's it," Mars said firmly as she made a point of placing a palm against Venus forehead. "Our staff... avatar is steaming from her ears already. As soon as we return, we'll be finding her a boyfriend. At _any_ ·cost. While she hadn't burst from the internal pressure yet, otherwise this _longstanding_ ·virginity will be the death of her."

"What pressure?" Venus giggled pushing her hand away

"This," Jupiter said calmly as she wiped under the blond's nose with the back of her index finger. The other girl drew back to look at the dark smear of blood on the white glove. "This one."

"Ah," Venus said sheepishly as she scratched at the back of her head. She grew a bit more serious. "Well... That's an argument if I know one."

"I'm afraid they'd have to find her a whole harem," Neptune noted so quietly that only Uranus heard her.

(シーンブレイク)

Thanks to the liane being bumpy, finding footholds was easy even when it started approaching vertical, coming close to the tree. Soon the travelers were not leaping but climbing from bulge to bulge. The kunai saved the day here. Akane felt chill trying to imagine how they'd fare without these irreplaceable tools. The backpacks proved to be a hindrance. Not because of their weight but because they were pulling towards the abyss. Her feet kept slipping on the overgrown bulges so Akane switched to climbing using only her arms. Until the single kunai she was hanging on popped out, leaving her in free fall for a fraction of a second. Adrenaline surging, she used her reflexes for the maximum effect. Ranma looked back at her from above but Akane was climbing with a stony face as if nothing had happened. She kept using her feet from that moment on.

To their luck, the liane started winding around the trunk, curving to the right. The climb was still steep, about sixty degrees, but better than vertical. Close up, the tree trunk was resembling a cavern-pitted bluff. It had huge ridges protruding far out like rock outcroppings, with dark rifts in-between. When they were climbing past one such chasm, Akane peered down, along the trunk. She didn't see the expected opening there, but deep darkness smelling like rotting wood. Either the liane was swelling up closing these openings, or the opening got clogged up in centuries. She didn't want to know. The darkness was exuding primeval danger.

Akane continued climbing in haste, keeping further out to the left side of the liane.

They reached the spot where yet another liane was reaching the trunk, hanging askew from a nearby tree. It was nearby only at the scale of the forest: three hundred meters is not a big deal for trees that would easily host a sports field on their cross-section.

Curving haphazardly, the newcomer liane was coiling around 'their' tree forming a literal knot before going up again. _Probably_ ·going up again: the girls could only see a bulk obstructing the sky and an another liana loop hanging over the abyss out of reach. The closer to the knot were they rising, the darker it was becoming. The 'beard' of hanging roots obscured the perspective like a wooly, unkempt curtain.

"I don't see any light ahead." Ranma stopped when their 'spiral stairs' became buried under a loop of the second liane. There was opening between that one and the trunk, but it was narrow like some Tokyo side alleys. And it was leading into complete darkness.

Akane found a better foothold, put both her kunai under her belt and took up the medallion. She was also giving her arms rest.

"There's some two hundred meters up to the nearest nav-point," she proclaimed with irritation. "Let me see... Oh, here it is. This thing does have light function, after all." The screen lit up brightly and she turned it forward, leaving the medallion open. It proved to be a lousy flashlight allowing to see barely couple meters in front of you. "Let me take the front," Akane suggested and began climbing up without waiting for response.

The crevice was irregularly shaped. The air here was stale, smelling strongly of rotting wood and fungi. The medallion was swaying on its chain casting shimmering greenish highlights on the closing walls of bumpy, slimy wood so dark that their light source couldn't banish the darkness. They were climbing almost blindly while the opening kept growing narrower until their backpacks started brushing against the walls. Then a crevasse between ridges opened up to their right, turning a narrow crevice into a narrow ledge over an abyss of unknown depth. It was slippery, curving towards the yawning void. The girls turned to face the wall and continued shuffling aside using their kunai to hold on. The second liane was intruding, pushing against the one they were walking on, forcing the girls out to the incline until both lianes merged into a solid, bumpy wall. Climbing along it sideways was pure torture. Akane tried to go up, to walk on top of the second liane, but they hit a sort of ceiling instead. Yet another loop was overhanging. Not inclined to climb a negative incline, they continued sideways.

"We are like howizzat they call them, the guys who study caves," Ranma joked trying to banish the oppressive silence. She didn't like it here. The silence was dead and ominous, feeling like it was actively devouring sounds. It kept reminding her of those words about 'world of no return'.

Suddenly, the next trunk ridge emerged from the darkness. All the lianes were squeezed flush against it, leaving no opening. Akane tried to squeeze into a narrow crevice she found, but it soon closed and she was stuck. The tiny light radius lured her with a false hope there could be a way leading further there.

"Let's go up along the ridge," Ranma suggested after she yanked her spouse out by her backpack strap.

They began climbing up a vertical wall of wood. It was less bumpy than the lianes, but there were plenty of chips sticking out, some a meter wide. Once, they had to hastily climb back down after they found themselves on a more prominent 'chip' and it started tilting towards the abyss with an ill-promising creak. There were lots of smaller chips, the size of a log. It was painfully clear that should you lose your grip, you'd end up dying a slow death impaled on one. But they had to go on, despite the danger.

There was no end to the tightly coiled lianes. Several times, the girls had found an opening and followed it only for the crevice to close forcing them pulling back from the dead end. Swearing, they'd return back to the ridge, to continue climbing it. Finally Akane proclaimed that climbing all the way here would be quicker and that they'd move back to lianes when they leave this trice accursed knot behind. She was gradually shifting to the right, deeper into the trunk, as the wood was softer there requiring less effort to stick kunai in it.

Ranma was feeling more and more ill at ease: her danger sense was silent, but there was something... primeval here. Like something watching you from the darkness.

"Be carefull, all right?" she blurted.

"Stop babysitting me!" Akane snorted indignantly as she let herself fall backwards to hold with her feet and arms against both sides of the narrowed rift. "It's faster this way. See?" She started walking upwards, pushing with her hands against the wall.

Being a tiny bit shorter, Ranma found this method of locomotion uncomfortable, so she kept following the other girl by sticking her kunai in the wood and pulling herself up on her arms, occasionally finding holds for her feet on the vertical wall.

The rift grew a bit narrower. Akane shifted her grip into a more comfortable position. One of her kunai tore out of the slimy wall, accompanied with rot pouring out like sand. Then her other kunai tore out too.

Falling, she trust both the knives up to the handles. Both tore furrows in the rotten wood, and she accelerated downwards, at Ranma. Tumbling in the air, Akane thrust her legs to the sides. She gasped landing hard in a split. Her feet held against the walls. Then her right foot sank into the rotten wood, her left foot slipping... Twisting impossibly, Akane plunged both her kunai into the left wall, sturdy and reliable. She was ready to let out a sigh of relief when her sense of balance reported that she was careening forward. But she was holding firm!

Managing to pull her knives out in the last possible moment, Akane pushed off the collapsing piece of wood, to hang in the middle of a resulting hole for a fleeting instant. It was narrow enough to repeat her trick of slamming her feet against its edges. The edges crunched, wood giving a bit, but held. Akane could finally catch her breath and find her bearings. She found that the wall they were climbing was barely a palm's width thick! There was a huge, rotten cavern beyond it. Most of it was drowning in darkness, but occasional patch of glowing mold allowed to feel the scale. The curves of the cavern, where its bizarre shape deviated from vertical, were bristling with jagged, spear-sized chips and fibres. Akane shuddered. Not from the sight of meter-long cockroaches swarming down there.

"Be careful, all right?" Ranma injected after catching up with her and looking into the hole.

Akane was looking at the bristling chips down there. She nodded against her will.

After this incident they took to the left, away from the center of trunk. Climbing in darkness while seeing no further than a couple meters wasn't just unpleasant anymore. It was scary. The wall of slimy black wood kept going upward. It was hard, unyielding, but oh so stable!

"I was thinking," Ranma broke the silence. "Why is it so dark here? It's a space between trunk ridges, some light should reach from above. Right?"

"You mean, it's plugged with something?" Akane replied. "That's the last thing we need."

Right then they ran into ceiling. It was a mass of something resembling stalactites. At first, their tips emerged from darkness. Then the small circle of dull light revealed a chaos of lumpy conical growths. Then, unsurprisingly, these cones closed against each other and the wall.

"Stumped," Ranma commented as she kicked experimentally at a lumpy cone. It responded with an empty rattle giving slightly under her foot like it was made from thick plywood.

"What could these be?" Perplexed, Akane headed to the left, towards the lianes. She had to twist: the wall of wood was uneven here, pitted like something had been eating away at it. It was not rot, but holes in the hard wood, on the one meter scale.

"Empty cocoons," Ranma explained as she continued hanging where she stopped, invisible in the darkness. "I mean, someone was hiding here for their chrysalis, like local moths or dragonflies. Stop trying, you won't find any opening. If there was one, they had clogged it up."

"Whoa." Akane glanced at the rows of cocoons, each several times her size. "I wouldn't want to meet such a moth in a narrow side alley." She kept stubbornly climbing sideways towards the liane until the ceiling of joined cones began descending. It seemed like the unknown larvae built against the liane first, only then clogging the opening between the trunk ridges. Akane involuntarily imagined such a larva, fat and wriggling, several times her size. She barely kept from throwing up. "What should we do now?"

"Stay there for now," Ranma adviced. "I'll try breaking upwards. This stuff shouldn't bee too durable." Several dull thumps followed. "Springy buggers! Oh well, let's do it the hard way, then. I don't like it here. This natural chi is drowning out all my senses." She sounded moving around in the darkness making herself comfortable on the vertical wall. "Mokou.."

The bright blue light cast all the chasm into visibility. It was like a triangle-shaped vertical tunnel formed by two tree ridges and lianes. There was uneven ceiling of bristling cones aove, with an abyss drowning in darkness below. But Akane barely noticed all of that. There was an immense centipede or millepede reaching for the girls from the other wall. She only managed to see a segmented body the size of a train and razor-sharp mandibles able to lop an elephant in half. The segmented doom was reaching the middle of the huge chasm, easily able to cross it and...

"..Takabisha!" The ki charge hit the ceiling with a fleeting flash, then it was darkness all over again. The danger was rendered invisible. The ceiling groaned, sagging. Something was pouring down noisily. But still there was no light, no opening.

"Watch out, there's a centipede!" Akane shouted, sure that Ranma couldn't have noticed it, blinded by her own ki blast.

"We'll punt it away," Ranma called back confidently. "Where is it?"

"It's the size of a train!" Akane shouted in panic. "Was reaching from the other wall!"

"And we haven heard something like that moving?" Ranma asked disbelievingly as she lit yet another ki ball ih her hand. The weak light didn't reach the other wall, but it cast sharp highlights on the chitinous carapace and two huge mandibles. "Holy cats!"

The centipede stirred, moving its head from side to side. The segments creaking as they ground against each other sounded clearly in the dead silence of the wooden cave.

"We woke it up," Ranma stated with regret as she killed her light source. "We crashed right into its lair and woke it up."

"What do we do?" Akane asked nervously. She was sharply aware of how vulnerable her position was: the tiny source of light wasn't allowing her to see around while making her highly visible. "Beating this—"

"We're leaving!" Ranma interrupted her sharply. "Get over here, now!"

There was rustling and creaking in the darkness, growing closer.

Akane went frantically climbing to the right. The kunai were refusing to stick into the hard wood, her feet kept slipping.

"Mokou.." Ranma began gathering an another, much more powerful ki charge. Akane saw rapidly approaching shadow on the edge of her vision. She did the only thing possible: she let go of the wall letting gravity yank her down. There was a dull impact above her head accompanied with a loud crunch. She was too busy trying to arrest her fall to pay attention. Her two kunai slipped once, twice, then took hold. There was a foothold.

"..Takabisha!" Ranma released her charge. Not at the centipede as Akane was expecting, but at the ceiling again. There was a crash followed by darkness and noise of falling debris. Above Akane there was creaking, crackling and rustling too. She imagined the centipede turning around, invisible beyond the circle of light, aiming these elephant-crushing mandibles at her...

"Akane!" the redhead called, lighting a small ki ball in her hand. It turned out Ranma hadn't been wasting time. She was now leaning down from a hole in the plywood-like stalactites.

"I'm al.. alright!" Akane called back, gulping nervously at the sight of the centipede's mandibles stuck in the hard wood where the girl was hanging a couple seconds ago. Like two huge serrated blades they had scraped deep furrows in the unyielding wood and stuck almost closing together. While she could barely stick her kunai in there! Transfixed, Akane was watching the segmented hulk writhe and windmill its segmented legs trying to pull out.

"Hurry!" Ranma urged her. Akane shook the spell off and started climbing to the right and up stealing fearful glances at the insect's head. Luckily, the centipede was stuck good. Akane reached the hole in the ceiling and the redhead caught her, extinguishing the ki ball. The centipede became invisible and thus a hundred times more dreadful.

"Raitsui.." Akane prepared to launch her own ki blast. But Ranma interrupted her, grabbing by the collar and dragging somewhere upwards.

"I can do this myself, thank you very much!" Akane rebuked indignantly as she twisted free. It was hard to climb, they had to clamber in complete darkness over some debris, over swaying sheets of something resembling thick bark and heaps of some stinky detritus. Her backpack kept catching, there was vile stuff falling down her collar. The emptiness below was yawning promisingly, making you keep expecting that thing to push in and lop your legs off.

Ranma launched yet another ki blast upwards, abandoning economy. Then Akane realized that her prior complaints at the stuff falling down her collar were these of a mollycoddle. Debris poured down like an avalanche, almost knocking her off. She was glad to have managed to cover her face with one arm... But it didn't matter because there was light above!

The girls pushed upwards with tripled energy, tearing out of rotting wood detritus to climb up the uneven wall of the ridge. It was lumpy and covered with slippery moss but that didn't stop the two martial artists. Squinting in the blinding daylight, they quickly reached the top of the knot.

Ranma stopped, listening.

"Why did you stop me!" Akane started berating the redhead. "Do you think it was nice to climb there not knowing if it catches up with us?"

"Do you remember the apes?" Ranma returned her back to the ground.

Akane frowned: "You mean those gorillas that were using ki? Of course."

"So then. Please understand that any louse and their grandmother knows that trick here!"

"Ah." Akane thought how stupid the disbelieving expression 'but that should have worked!' would have looked on her severed head. Just like the dozens of youma she and Ranma had finished off. The dumb things couldn't believe it to the very end that their 'awsom powah' could be not enough against some puny humans.

Akane felt an urge to mallet herself.

Meanwhile there was not a sound coming from the dark chasm.

"Either it stuck so good," Ranma concluded, "that it still couldn't pull out. Or, more likely, it's an ambush predator, too lazy to chase the prey." She turned to face her quiet wife whose face was reflecting a struggle of emotions. "By the way it's not the size of train. It's much smaller."

"All right, I admit it," Akane grumbled. Perceiving herself critically still remained her weak point. "Fear takes molehills for mountains and all that. But it was half a train in size for sure!"

Dusting themselves off they went around the trunk to find a liane leading up. The lianes were bulging and overlapping, the irregularities of the knot were on the order of a two-story building. There were tree lianes going up, so Ranma kept scrutinizing them until she chose the most flatly winding one. The girls ascended a couple revolutions and only then allowed themselves to stop and catch their breath.

"I wonder, is this whole world overgrown with such forest?" Ranma asked rhetorically.

Akane perceived it as a literal question. After some digging in the medallion she said, sounding surprised: "No, only the oceans. Just imagine: this is all floating!" She looked at the gigantic trees the two of them were crawling like ants.

"Well, if the roots are heavy at the bottom and filled with some bubbles higher up, then why not?" Ranma was hard to surprise. "Such a bobber could work."

"And the continents are all covered with deserts," Akane added out of place. "While we are somewhere mid-Atlantic... All right, let's go." She clicked a few buttons. "Why youuu, good-for-nothing...!"

"Jammed again?" Ranma asked with worry.

Akane did not reply. The verbal limitations were strangling her. Only her upbringing was preventing her from voicing her opinion really colorfully.

"You have to relax," the redhead injected quietly. "Regard this simply as a very difficult exercise. Come on, concentrate and fight on."

Akane breathed out, then started tapping keys while mumbling something under her breath. It was taking too long.

Ranma kept looking around unhurriedly, not forgetting to check the haze-enshrouded sky. Lest some Mothra-sized butterfly catches them by surprise.

Some fifteen minutes passed peacefully. Some bird-like shadows were circling slowly high above, but nothing else was moving. There was not even wind. Only Akane was sniffing louder with each minute, starting to fume.

It was then that a chest-laden charge of acid-pink enthusiasm caught up with then. He bunny-hopped from a totally unexpected direction, along one of the loops that were sticking out of the great knot.

"Why the clatter with no chatter?" inquired Brya. To Ranma's irritation he wasn't even breathing hard. "Why have you stopped? Since we had stepped into this mess anyway, we have to cut and bolt like batter out of Hell! Or brya?"

"We'd like to, but our medallion broke," Akane explained grimly as she tried in vain to incinerate the unruly mechanism with her glare.

"Huh?" Brya pushed his head under her arm to look at the screen. "A resonance in the hyperloop...? Oh lala... It's not broken. It's you. You did something queer, so your target is now could be reached only if you do, or don't, something that makes it unreachable... It's a natural logic bomb, in real-life physics to boot! Such a rare glitch, I thought this was a purely hypothetical possibility." Suddenly, he stared at Ranma with suspicion. "Hey, girl-guy! Aren't you, by any chance, planning to _kill_ ·that Usagi of yours?"

"Listen, _you_..." growled Ranma. Her eyes flashed terrifyingly. "For her, I'd..."

"I got it, I got it!" Brya squeaked backing away from her so hastily that he almost fell down. "So, umm, we scratch this possibility out. Well, brya-hem, I don't know, then."

A few minutes everything was quiet. The monsterabbit was thinking hard, Akane looking around watching the gigantic forest stretching around them in three dimensions and Ranma was slowly letting out steam.

"Hmm, that could work, brya..." the monsterabbit finally said breaking the silence. "Let me use your ,medallion, beauties." He tried to push under Akane's arm again but was shoved away. "I thought of something but I have to work with it." Tiptoeing, he leaned over Akane's shoulder reaching with a tentacle he released from his armpit. He froze as he felt the impending doom with his gut, and added hastily: "But I, er, have to do it with your finger. Otherwise the protection will block me. The keyboard recognizes its owner's body part using DNA."

Akane fixed the bunny with a suspicious look. He flattened his ears back and fidgeted.

"So if I take a wooden chip," Ranma injected, "and try pushing keys with it, it won't work?"

"Exactly." Brya nodded. "Exactly. I admit, my knowledge of the Ahs users' tools is purely theoretical. But this sort of protection is a scientifically proven fact. It's dumb, though. A cut off finger often works, for example. But there are also examples of such, brya, inventors being spontaneously erased..."

"Watch it," Akane warned him as she held her finger out for him.

Brya wrapped it with his tentacle cautiously as if it twas a live viper. Then he went tapping keys. Unfamiliar menus and formulas were flicking so fast that Akane lost track on the fourth second. But it wasn't for long.

"I knew it, brya," the pink one commented with frustration as he released Akane's finger and reeled his tentacle in.

"Knew what?" Ranma asked crossing her arms.

"The problem is with you, brya, not with it," the monsterabbit replied in a tired voice. "What a bummer, I kept them for so many years."

"Kept whom?" asked Akane.

"Ahs constructs for—" The monsterabbit suddenly fell silent stopping himself mid-sentence. "I'm very sorry, brya, but I have to use err... artifact-class Ahs-constructs on you without disclosing what these do."

"What are you trying to pull?" Ranma advanced on him menacingly.

"I can't! If I tell you, the resonance won't go away and we'll perish here!"

"Why can't you tell us?" Akane inquired frowningly. "It's like some kinds of magic with their weird limitations?"

"It's no magic!" Offended, Brya lost his trepidation for the unfriendly girls. "The first rule of temporal mechanics!" the pink bunny recited puffing up, in a tone of a university professor. "Ninety seven percent of temporal construct links run through the consciousness of sapient beings as they are principal agents of reality deviation!"

"What...?" Ranma was confused. "What time has to do with this?"

"Why?" he was surprised in turn. "You have been using a leading _temporal_ ·hyperloop all this time without ever realizing its nature?"

"But manipulating time in the bounds of Ahs is impossible," objected Akane.

"Impossible for those who _don't have the rights_ ," Brya corrected her. "The system itself is practically based on this. It's one of the primary system resources, you know. So it's natural to assume that a user of high enough level — I'd peg the threshold at level two or one — would be able to use temporal hyperloops for their own goals. I admit, I had viewed this mechanics as just a curious theoretic exercise because energy requirements are so outrageous it makes the temporal hyperloops impractical even for level one Ahs lords. I wouldn't have imagined I'd meet a creation of the Zeroth one who is able to spend oceans of energy on a whim with frightening ease."

"Oceans of energy?" Ranma lifted a brow.

"For this thing to work," Brya pointed at the medallion, "somewhere in its depths, Ahs is burning forty to ninety solar masses per second converting them into temporal energy."

"Yikes!" squeaked Akane. She involuntarily held the unassuming copper-colored medallion away.

"And he is just spending that much on a cheesy imitation of Dragonball?" Ranma said disbelievingly.

"Oh, you know that comic too?" The pink one perked up. "Horribly violent one, especially brutal towards its end. But please understand, Ahs includes hundreds if not thousands of virtually uninhabited universes. While the Zeroth one is one for them all. He has no shortage of dead matter. He can burn a hundred galaxies per second, the multiversum won't even notice.

"That's fine," Ranma said returning the conversation back to track, "but you still haven't explained why we can't know."

"Because the resonance is in your heads, brya! Not in this medallion, not in the system, but in your consciousness! So to rid of it you had to pick up a wise specialist from outside. Namely, me! Tagging along until you reach some decent city..." He scratched behind his ears with his scythe.

Akane glanced at Ranma. The redhead shrugged: what else could they do? Only watch the loon. It this was some scam of his, he'll get caught sooner or later.

The monsterabbit meanwhile was digging through his chest. Reaching the bottom, he pulled out two dull gray crystals: "Here. I've been keeping them for a rainy day. Such a rare treasure..." He held the crystals out for the girls with a sigh.

"What do we do with these?" Ranma was twirling the crystal in her hands.

"What do you mean, what, brya? As with any other Ahs construct, place it against your forehead to activate."

"What to these do?" Akane wondered out loud, eying her crystal critically.

"We could only trust his word." Ranma scrunched her face up in displeasure. "Listen up, _hentai-bakemono_. If this is some sorta love charm, I'll skin you alive afterward!" Glaring at the monsterabbit promisingly she placed the crystal against her forehead. A second later it disappeared with a loud pop making Ranma blink in surprise. There were no visible changes. Sighing, Akane did the same with her own crystal.

The medallion bleeped.

"It works," confirmed Akane.

They continued climbing.

The inner side of the lianes facing the trunk had more good places to put your foot or grab at. On the other hand, the trunk's ridges and folds, together with lianes, were forming a real labyrinth of dark caverns. There were _things_ ·living there as the girls now knew. The path could lead to a dead end, the crevasses often closing and leaving no second exit against one's expectations. Adding to that was the danger of the rotting wood collapsing to send you plummeting into a twenty meters deep rot-filled cavern bristling with spear-like chips.

It was easy to avoid these dangers by keeping to the outer side of the lianes winding around the trunk. But that path had dangers of its own. Everything was covered in fleshy, slippery tropical greenery ill suited for grabbing at it, all over the abyss so immense it made one's head spin. But the dividing line between "inner" and "outer" was also fickle. The lianes were winding haphazardly, often overlapping each other, crossing and kinking. A ledge over the abyss could become a dank, dark crevasse and the other way around. It would be even harder climbing these almost vertical spirals if the surface of the lianes wasn't so bumpy as if these were ropes braided from several stems of one to two meters. The lianes themselves were no less than four meters thick, but mostly much thicker. And still they looked like thin creeping stems against the tree trunks.

"There's nothing brutal there," Ranma was muttering under her breath as she kept scanning around and watching her wife on pure autopilot. "Dragonball is a kind manga for kids. Nobody even gets killed there, it's only realistic at the first glance. Pity I only could read it in snatches. I wonder, when did I grow up to lose interest in it? I haven't even noticed. I don't even remember who was the last baddy Goku had beaten. Piccolo? Or did he just appear then? I can't remember."(note 1)

When they stumbled on an another gigantic knot they didn't even try crawling through it. They went climbing its outer surface. This cost them lots of energy and nerves: the negative incline was slippery, their feet slipping often. They were going forward only thanks to the kunai they were slamming deep into the hard wood, pulling out with a lot of effort. Whith no certainty that you can catch another hold if your kunai slips.

The monsterabbit was whining pitifully, even as he had an easier time holding thanks to the claws on the climbers strapped to his feet. Not needing his breath for talking, he wore their nerves thin with incessant arguments that making a small detour would be better than risking their lives like this.

When they reached the top of the knot the girls sat for a long time resting their arms: such rock-climbing wasn't easy even with their superhuman strength. Then they walked along a liane bridge leading to an adjacent Tree, tearing through jungle growing on top of the liane and climbing from bump to bump. After all they were through, this felt like a walk in the park.

Then they were climbing down. And up again.

They spent several sweaty and stuffy hours in this exhausting manner. Two thirds of the way were behind when the medallion started glitching again on top of all the "pleasantries" of their travel. The nav-points patterns were shifting for no reson, making them correct their route radically and unexplainably. Sometimes the nav-points disappeared altogether accompanied with the same old "leading hyperloop not closed" the girls were sick and tired of. They had to "dowse" changing their path randomly and climbing back to make the hellish contraption un-jam.

"Hey, perv," Ranma addressed the monsterabbit in a hushed voice as she fell back from Akane who was slowly starting to steam. "Your cure ain't seems to be working. What does this stuff mean, again?"

"Brya-huh? The non-closed loop?"

"One and the same."

"Brya... I told you already. It means that your goal is unreachable. Specifically due to your own efforts to reach it. Meaning, if you continue the same course with the same intentions you'll never reach it."

"For example?"

"Weeell... Were you ordinary people, boring and weak-willed, I'd say you despair and change your mind, or corner yourselves into a trap with no exit. But you are so strong and tenacious that the non-closed loop could mean only one thing for you..." He fell silent without finishing.

"And what is that?" inquired Ranma.

"Death."

Ranma glanced at Akane. The dark-haired girl was glaring daggers at the medallion. Then she turned a bit to the right, then to the left, sighed with satisfaction and continued along the left edge of the liane bypassing dense large-leafed bushes in the center. The redhead managed to catch a movement in these bushes as something smal and brightly colored in yellow and black dashed there. She shivered, chills creeping along her spine. Even Ranma's patented braggadocio failed leaving him with only a dull, raw anxiety. Too many times did Death breathe down their necks this day. The memory of relatives and comrades-in-arms dying was too fresh even if it was all undone after the destruction of Galaxia.

"Akane... Be careful, all right?" she blurted against her will, in a disgustingly pleading voice.

"Stop babysitting me!" the other girl snapped back. She was straining against frustration as she was. She didn't need Ranma's coddling. "Watch out yourself." Far from being an epitome of objectivity, she could out-stubborn any mule when she was irritated.

Ranma barely held a heavy sigh back. They had to walk this path to its end. There was no turning back.

They went on in silence. It was full of apprehension and unhappy thoughts on Ranma's part and barely checked irritation on Akane's. Brya had to put everything into not falling back: bunnies are ill suited to rock-climbing even if they have mantiss arms.

(シーンブレイク)

Groaning from effort Usagi lifted the monster of a leg, a soon-to-be gammon, onto improvised holds made of gnarled branches raised at the sides of the campfire. Her stomach was twitching and growling giving an impression that there was some fierce beast in there trying to get free.

"Calm down, I'll eat soon!" Usagi bent down over the coals blowing at them. Her long ponytails, one singed slightly, were coiled up in wide loops hanging down her back, held in place by an improvised bandana of a blouse sleeve.

"Excellent! Now add more firewood... Waitaminute, where did I... Oh no! I'm out! But it felt like I gathered a ton of it!

Her stomach growled again. Usagi let out a heavy sigh as she eyed the leg lovingly. "Wait for me, I'll return soon." Grabbing for her disc she headed to a nearest tree.

(シーンブレイク)

"It's not far now," Akane proclaimed with relief as she glanced at the screen. "First thing we'll open a portal to somewhere with lots of fresh water!" Their canteens were long empty, but they wouldn't risk using the water that could be found in leaf seams: the air of this forest was heavy, even this high above the swamp. Who could know what forms of chi-reinforced disease could inhabit the local waters? "I'd agree to a mid-road pool if it was clean."

"You're parched too?" Ranma symphatized.

With such lack of water they'd feel better traveling the heart of Sahara. At least the heat wouldn't be so mockingly tacky and humid there.

They were climbing through a forest of normal-sized trees growing on top of the liane when a suspiciously loud crunching could be heard ahead. Ranma jumped onto a tree top to investigate. Surely, trees ahead were swaying and shaking, some breaking. There was some big animal making its way towards them.

"We'll deal with it, scram," Ranma adviced their traveling companion. The pink bunny flattened his ears against his back and made a hasty retreat.

"Let's try to hide and let it pass," suggested Akane.

"Naw," Ranma disagreed. "With our luck it'll notice us. Then it's either knock it out or find another path. Don't forget, we have a perv who can't hide if his life depended on it. But that thing is so slow, let's go greet it."

"Wait," Akane tried to stop her. "Do you smell that?"

They bounded to stalk the gargantuan beast... Only to find it a rotting carcass exuding a miasma of carrion stench. It was being dragged along by a host of huge gray ants the girls were already familiar with. And what's worse, the martial artists' stealth failed as they were preparing to hide against a singular animal much farther ahead but stumbled instead onto watchful scout ants face to face.

The local kings of nature wrote the girls right away under "food resources".

Mindful of the chi-reinforcement ubiquitous in this forest, the girls prepared to fight for their lives. But the three-meter ants turned out not to pose any real challenge for the two martial artists. The insects were strong like bulls but pitifully slow and predictable. Their fighting tactic was atrocious as well: they weren't even trying to dogpile Ranma and Akane, just formed a ring of five or six around them. The remaining dozens kept milling around uselessly until a spot was freed by yet another comrade punted to its doom. Wash, rinse and repeat.

The battle was starting to feel like a chore now, Ranma feeling more irritated at having to sweat when she was tacky and thirsty already. Where's their vaunted ki-reinforcement, she though absent-mindedly sending two ants at once flying with a split-kick. Both followed on ballistic curves away from the liane. Probably all going into them just existing so unnaturally big, she thought remembering the perverted bunny's lamenting. She next sent three flying in a single move, their carapaces cracked. Yeah, just like back home, in Ryugenzawa. Huge, but beaten with ridiculous ease. If only these pests weren't so bone-headedly stubborn!

Ranma was feeling disgusted by such mass slaughter of animals. But the ants took the choice from her by being completely unfamiliar with such an alien concept as 'retreat'. Akane wasn't bothered in the slightest as a firm believer in 'they asked for it' justifying the means.

Akane wasn't even dodging. She was hitting so fast they didn't have time to begin their biting lunge, their heads cracking with sick crunches. The progress of battle on her side was only limited by how fast the ants miling around would fill the resulting gaps.

Confident that her wife could take more with no problem, the redhead jumped away hoping to speed the process up. Now there were five or six ants attacking each girl at any given moment. Ranma moved into a thicket of trees in hopes more ants would start attacking her from above. But alas, the beasts proved to be too dimwitted for even that.

But finally the snapping of mandibles began to cease, the last stragglers hurrying up to attack the girls suicidally in ones and twos. When they were down to only two ants, the last specimens suddenly changed their tactic. They started backing away in different directions, their abdomens raised and their heads held low to the ground.

"What are they doing?" Ranma asked staying in place. Something was wrong here. These stubborn things couldn't just back off.

"Who cares?" snorting, Akane leaped to the ant closest to her, sizing it up to finish the insect off with a flourish.

"Watch out!" Ranma shouted. "They're probably about to spit acid!" The ants they fought so far did nothing of the sort, but who knows. This pose was too strange, with head and thorax held low and abdomen pointing at zenith.

The redhead jumped up onto a tree. Akane was skeptical: if they could they would have done it long ago. Howewer she still jumped away from the crouching ant to stand near a thicker tree. She'd hide behind its trunk from the splattered acid, if some follows at all.

The ants convulsed, a hair-thin lightning bolt flashing between their antennae. Their heads burst like smashed melons.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then Ranma eeped as she felt the tree toppling under her feet. She jumped down. Other trees were failing too. Some stuck hanging on their neighbors, some slid into the abyss glistening with mirror-smooth cuts.

The tree beside which Akane was standing toppled too. Ranma stared at her wife, blood freezing in her veins. The other girl was standing still for an endless moment.

Then she started feeling for her left side, her hands shaking. Her side turned out to be fine, but there was a long, straight cut in her jacket.

Ranma let out a shuddering breath of relief. "That was some final technique," she noted with forced lightheartedness, but her voice quivered treacherously.

Akane only nodded silently as she stared at the row of perfectly smooth tree stumps while fingering the cut in her jacket. Her mouth was dry from... From thirst. Of course, from thirst. "Let's go!" she said sharply. "The sooner we get there, the sooner we drink."

"Hey!" Brya hopped up to the girls dragging a heavy ant head in his scythe arms. "Look at my trophy!" He turned the insect head this way and that displaying it like it was a treasure. "So I'm ducking it out there, waiting for you to deal with it. And then, suddenly, an ant! It climbs out of the forest and _looks_ ·at me! Uh-oh, I tink. And then, brya, it rushed me! It jumped me! But I kept my wits! I grabbed it by its head and kicked mightily! Just you know, we bunnies can kick like no tomorrow! So it was finished, deep-six'd, its head tore off just like that! But it didn't give up! Even being comprised of a single severed head it kept snapping and almost managed to lop my own one off! But I— Hey, what's that stench?" The pink one finally bothered to take a look around and noticed the rotting carcass in the way. "Oh lala..."

"Yeah, a complete lala," Ranma grumbled. "There were lots of them, dragging this carrion. I don't know about you, but I will risk jumping over this thing. I don't want to climb over rotting meat."

Holding their breath, the girls leaped over the remains of unknown animal. Brya dawdled back staring at the smoothly cut tree stumps and mumbling something about a "amazing and mytsteeerious phenomena". He caught up with the girls later, stinking suspiciously and keeping wiping his scythes against the surrounding foliage. It seems he couldn't jump as far as the girls did. Some rabbit he was.

They continued their travel. It wasn't much less tiring than trying to cross rocky terrain riddled with canyons.

But there was the black pyramid at last. Or, more precisely, its tip poking out of the fog below that was growing denser with each minute. The light from the haze-shrouded sky was fading, its reddening hue making the green of the forest even darker. The girls were hurrying, moving fast and risky. Both had slipped several times by now on the slippery bumps covered with treacherously slippery moss. It was only thanks to their kunai they held from falling.

Because they absolutely didn't want to learn what night in this forest was like.

"So, the last push?" Ranma asked eying the bumps of the nigh-vertical liane to choose which ones would be better to follow.

The girls started a hasty descent, slipping and grabbing hold with kunai they kep thrusting into the hard wood. Brya was overhead, "brya"-ing occasionally, his chest rattling. Both were apprehensive of him losing hold and falling on their heads.

It kept that way for a hundred meters more until they were level with the pyramid's tip. The nightfall was coming rapidly, it was already dark down here. They had hard time seeing footholds. The grass and bushes around were beginning to rustle with movement. Even the multi-voiced chorus of animal calls from the jungle below changed its tone, becoming somehow menacing. These sounds were suspiciously loud too, as if the girls were barely above the jungle.

Ranma stopped, sniffing at the air suspiciously. It felt even more stifling now. "Look, the tree tops!" she exclaimed in alarm.

"What? Where?" Akane took alarm.

There were tree crowns visible vaguely through the fog, surrounding the top of the pyramid.

"But it's half Tokyo Tower in height! Akane said with surprise, still not realizing the grim meaning of this discovery. "Are the jungle trees so high here?"

"It's not trees are high," Ranma said hoarsely, her voice crestfallen. "It's the pyramid. It's buried deep." She cut down a small tree with a palm chop, then chopped its crown in the same manner, and launched the improvised spear downward. There was a crunch of branches, then a clearly heard splash.

"The pyramid is flooded," she corrected. "Only its top is above the swamp."

"This is unfair!" Akane exclaimed fighting the despair that threatened to overwhelm her. "Why couldn't this damn pyramid sit higher? How would we reach the hall now? By diving? It's a hundred meters if not more. Our breath won't last long enough to reach that depth, not to mention aiming the portal! And that's if we won't be eaten by some sharks on our way there!" Her arms falling down her sides helplessly, she felt tears welling in her eyes. "So, then... we won't be able to reach that token? Mission failed? Usagi..."

Ranma wanted to reassure her, to tell her they'd beat it, that she shouldn't be saying such things so lightly. But she didn't have time for it.

The mechanical voice reached from every direction at once, warning about executing emergency protocol number... The rest of its phrase was drowned by terrible noise that made their very bones vibrate. The pyramid jumped up, fast and sharp as if it had all the mass of a tennis ball.

The swamp below exploded, displaced by the sharp movement of a pointy but still pyramidal shape up through it at insane speeds. It splashed up and away in a burst of flying dirt and water, splintered wood and whole trees, expanding just a couple dozen meters below the girls like a mudrock flow, pulping and smashing everything in its way. The martial artists held for the dear life as their giant liane was battered shuddering violently.

But the pyramid wasn't finished. There were still some giant roots entangling it, now broken and sliding slowly down its sides. The pyramid twirled around its vertical axis, as sharply and violating inertia as it had came up. The roots were pulped and sent flying, bus-sized chunks raining slowly around the girls. The entrance arch was now facing them, showing the immaculate hall inside.

"Tha.. that's some move!" Akane squeaked, owerwhelmed by the sudden demonstration of might.

The water below started flowing into the empty space with a mighty roar until the hole in the water collapsed with a tremendous thunderclap, throwing up a huge fountain up from the fog. Thankfully, it hit the flat underside of the pyramid, reflecting away from the girls in an another shockwave that rolled under them.

The stench alone almost suffocated them.

"Excellent!" Ranma snapped angrily as she eyed the distance to the entrance. "And how should we reach that?" The pyramid was hanging in the air now, its bottom ending barely ten meters below the entrance arch in a stubby, very flat-pointed tip of the same seven triangle faces.

But there was still half a hundred meters separating the girls and the entrance. Granted, they could manage such a jump if they took a good running start. But there was nowhere to make that running start. The liane below was torn up and scoured clean of everything that had been growing on it, still shaking and shuddering as giant waves obscured by fog and darkness continued crushing and messing up the deadly pulp of rotten water and smashed wood below.

The bridge of mirror appeared suddenly and silently, stretching from the entrance arch to under their feet like a giant ruler. It was a straight sheet of perfect mirror without any railing. Their liane was suddenly swaying aside. Ranma jumped down to the bridge hastily, unable even to pull her deeply rooted kunai out. Akane followed her a fraction of second later.

Bisected by the bridge plane, the liane held for several seconds supported by only a surviving uncut piece of its side. Then the bottom part snapped off with a suffering groan, to begin its stately descent into the fog-shrouded mess below.

The upper part started swaying ponderously, tearing whole layers of greenery off its brethren and waving the wailing monsterabbit around.

"Jump! Come on, jump!" the girls yelled at him seeing the liane about to sway away. It was doubtful such a convenient position for jumping down would repeat.

The pink one jumped without hesitation, hollering pitifully all the way. He landed almost right. Ranma managed to snatch him by the scruff of his neck before he fell off, windmilling his paws at the edge.

The saved freak of nature cried tears of relief, then grabbed at her with all his appendages, quashing against himself. Ranma emitted a strangled shriek of outrage. Her mouth full of pink fur, she was unable to voice her opinion on him in detail. Then her shriek turned into an ominous roar: one of countless paws grabbed where it absolutely, _definitely_ ·shouldn't have.

There was a sharp rip of tearing fabric and the overly clingy one followed a ballistic flight path. He landed on the bridge at the very entrance, to roll inside the pyramid head over heels, his chest opened and spilling its contents.

Ranma just stood there, herface red from anger, her fists clenched. Then she noticed some suspicious draft. She looked down...

The red silk shirt — her _favorite_ ·red silk shirt — was falling down around her in shreds, leaving her in pants and undershirt. All thanks to the multitude of clawed, insect-like paws and a couple chitin scythes. The undershirt was threatening to follow the shirt's example, reduced on her back to a number of horizontal strips.

"I'll strangle him," Ranma growled, clenching her fists even tighter and making a step towards the pyramid. "I'll strangle the bastard."

The pink one was saved by the bag of tokens falling off her neck as its strap turned out to be torn as well. Ranma caught it, checked it thoroughly for damage, then attached it to her waist. Her urge to kill ran out while she was making a hole in her pants, as these had no real belt, to tie the bag's cord around the pants' elastic and tie. Joining Akane and monsterabbit inside, she only glared death at him. Which had no more effect that splashing water on a goose.

(シーンブレイク)

They had invited Mamoru in hope to alleviate his anxiety. Honest.

They should have known. After all, the road to hell is paved with exactly that, good intentions. They'd better have eviscerated him with a dull, rusty knife. That would have been more merciful. Much more.

"USAKO!" yet another heart-rending scream. There's inhuman terror in his eyes reddening from the strain.

"USAKO! WAKE UP!" There's a sound of hair being torn out in despair.

Of course it's useless. Even were they able to establish double-sided connection, she'd not wake up. You could fire a cannon near her now, she wouldn't wake. She was sleeping a leaden sleep after filling her tummy for the first time in days.

"USAKOOOOO!" Here goes one bent console.

The pseudowolves were stalking closer, one almost could hear them licking their chops. Usagi was smiling in her sleep, holding the giant, half-eaten gammon tight like a pet.

"Usakooo..." Should they hear him now, even the doomed souls despairing in the deepest bowels of hell would shudder in compassion.

The pseudowolves lunged.

Rei turned away, unable to look. Ami clasped a hand over her mouth, her eyes like saucers. Others simply froze paralyzed by horror.

The beasts judged the gammon as more tasty, leaving the skinny Japanese girl for the second course.

A bad idea.

Miliseconds after Usagi felt the gammon being pulled out of her embrace, she was fully awake, on all fours, emitting an enraged growl fitting for a cave bear, not a delicate girl.

The pack of predators, each the size of a lion, backed away in fright. They definitely didn't have chibi-Usa's conditioning.

Less a second later the lethal relative of Frisbee was in the air, cutting through the night like black lightning powered with all the power of Usagi's feral anger. Only a few especially lucky pseudowolves managed to get away alive.

The girls at the screen wiped icy sweat. Mamoru just slid down to the floor in a twitching heap of fried nerves. Only _kami_ ·knew how many neurons fell today in their line of duty.

"One has to wonder," Ami noted, her voice wavering. "What would she do with all that meat?"

(シーンブレイク)

Akane closed the portal cutting them off from the forest darkening with coming night. A second later the same arch opened into the sky, towards dawn. The pressure started pushing them out, only to be cut as a familiar membrane of force field closed the aperture off. There were rows of mountains stretching down below, their barren slopes rising from a sea of clouds. A bit further, the land was replaced with shade of the titanic forest where trees were the size of mountains. The crowns rising over the clouds looked very much like pines: the bare reddish trunks — few lianes reaching so high — ending with flat panes of horizontal branches. It was just like a pine forest at dawn, if one ignored the fact of these 'pines' rising from a layer of cumulus clouds that looked weird in the shade of giant crowns.

"Look!" Ranma pointed down. "It's me or is that mountain really writhing?"

Akane switched the portal. The arch blinked, opening at a mountainside. The slope was really all writhing and moving.

"It's the anthill," Akane said, her voice quiet. "That same one."

"Something is wrong?" Ranma asked warily. The change in Akane's mood was too uncharacteristic.

"It's nothing, It's just..." Akane fell silent looking outside. "It's just that this is one of the islands near the shores of Okinawa. It's a desert... If we visit the main islands we'll find nothing but desert there, barren and lifeless. With anthills."

"Oh, I see." Ranma shrugged. "Don't think about it too hard. We are traveling worlds that are like dead look-alikes of our Earth. It's natural for us to stumble onto remains of a look-alike of our Homeland. Don't feel so down. _Our_ ·Japan is back there, it's fine. It will be completely fine when we reach our goal and return victorious.

"You're right!" Akane agreed shaking her brooding off and starting to tap the keys. The portal opened above the forest, then again and again, each time closer to one particular giant tree.

"We are lucky!" Akane informed joyfully. "The token is stuck somewhere on its very top, we don't have to fish it out of the swamp below!" She switched the portal again, peering out through the thinning rainbowy film until it disappeared. The pressure equalized allowing her to lean outside and take a better look. "Here it is!" she exclaimed pulling back inside and tapping the keys. The portal blinked opening half a hundred meters above a cozy hollow, its gentle slopes formed by titanic branches going in all directions. Its bottom was overgrown with green grass, probably some earth was brought by winds. Right at the center of this green carpet, the silver ball of a token was resting, glinting in the sun.

"I'll grab it!" Ranma jumped down from the height of a twenty-story building. She arrested her fall with a calculated detonation of a ki blast. Brya pulled something in his chest, then jumped out after her. He floated down slowly, dangling under his chest. "Nice and bucolic!" he approved taking a look around.

Ranma involuntarily agreed with him, though she didn't let it show. The branch sides gently sloping up were shielding the hollow from the outside world, and by extension from the wind. The air at this altitude was crisp and cool, smelling like bark heated by sun with a slight spicy undertone of some exotic resin. The sun was pleasantly warm against the cool air, shining down from a crystal clear, deep blue sky.

Ranma was just standing there relaxing, her eyes closed from pleasure. Then she shook her reverie off and bent down to pick up the token. "The six-star one," she commented after counting the complex black runes that floated lazily against the mercury-like background. She replaced the token in the leather bag with the four others and tied it thoroughly, then checked it again making sure it was holding on her pants tie firmly. She cast a last glance at the serene landscape. It'd do them a lot of good to rest an hour in a safe location. "All right..." The redhead sighed dejectedly. "Duty calls and stuff, we have two more to collect." She lifted her head. "Akane, get a rope! I can't jump that high!"

Leaning out of the portal, Akane disappeared for a moment to emerge again from the thin plane barely visible from down below, along its plane. There was a backpack in her hands and she was rummaging in it actively.

"Is the rope there?" the redhead shouted, starting to lose patience.

"Are you sure you don't have it?" Akane shouted back, doubt in her voice. "Why did you jump down with your backpack!"

"I was an unthinking fool, that's why," Ranma grumbled quietly as she threw her own backpack off and started rummaging in it. "If it turns out I had it all along..."

"Wait!" Akane shouted making the two below lift their heads. Clasping the backpack under her arm, she opened the medallion. "You don't have to bother. I'll just lower the port—"

The portal closed with a sharp click. The half of Akane hung there for one infinitely stretching instant, her face showing extreme surprise. Then it plummeted fountaining blood and intestines. The portal opened again on the ground level. The bottom half of the girl fell out of it in a bloody heap, flopping down onto the grass.

Numb with horror, Ranma rushed to catch the plummeting half of her soulmate... Akane's face reflected frightened disbelief. Then it stilled forever, her eyes growing dull.

A dispassionate mechanical voice reported self-locking failure condition four.

Ranma's world blackened, receding rapidly and fading into a ringing silence. She didn't notice how she fell onto her knees, her hands clutching at the ground. A dire, intolerable cold flooded everything. No "Soul of Ice" could compare to it. Cold filled with raw, wrenching pain. Worn out by multiple previous close calls, her mind faltered and started shutting down. Ranma tried to fight it, sluggishly and powerlessly. The disaster had been keeping close all day, attriting his will, closing in like a circling shark. To strike suddenly, irrecoverably — like a cat slamming into your face — catching him unprepared, relaxed... The excruciating pain was getting stronger and stronger. It felt like something vital, deeply rooted, inseparable was being torn out of his insides. Ranma couldn't, was unable to, continue living in this empty, meaningless world. He looked into the still eyes of Akane and it hit him even worse. "Forgive me... I... I can't hold any longer." She wasn't whispering anymore but hissing the words out in pain. The pain that was searching for an outlet but couldn't find any. And then it was like light flashed in her dimming mind. But of course! There was a solution! There was an outlet! He just had to gather all the pain and release it in one simple, very simple technique!

Smiling insanely, Ranma stood up crossing her arms at the chest level. The grass all around her was withering, the very air blackening, and yet the aura saturated with pain and madness kept growing more and more powerful. Only a tiny rational part of him was aware of how horrible a betrayal he was about to commit. But it was so detached, so apathetic that he didn't have the strengh nor the desire to stop herself.

"I have failed you, Your Majesty," she bitterly addressed Queen Serenity who was standing unseen over her shoulder looking at him harshly. At _her_. "I know, I should have fought to the last, to protect the Princess at any cost... But just a second of infirmity ruined everything." Here, in this corner of her soul, in this sanctuary amidst the hurricane of darkness, there was no Ranma. Here she was a girl. The girl who had received the great honor and upheld it. The girl who swore her allegiance to Usagi, who fought for her loved one and defeated enemies and saved her... The girl who failed everyone so stupidly, faltering under the onslaught of dark emotions, letting them overwhelm her and sweep her away. Ephemeral, on the edge of existing, more idea than a real embodiment, the red-headed woman lowered her eyes in shame, her hands wringing the hem of her white, red-trimmed skirt. "Could I dare to hope that this is not the end of the mission? That I survive and would be able to finish it? Ryouga never managed to kill himself... But no. It's not my place to hope. The pig was just losing his will to live, he never wanted to die for real..." the inner Ranko fell down to her knees, a bitter tear of dishonor rolling down her numbing, fading cheek. The roaring mother of all Shishi Hokou Dans was raging around her, gaining might with each second. "This is the end." She had no strength left to stop her insane self. The black vortex was tightening, tugging at the her-inner who was already transparent like a ghost, threatening to blow the remains of self-awareness away like mist.

A girl with empty, insane eyes was standing on top of the Ur-tree, a corona of black lighting surrounding her, a titanic column of black light rising from her into the sky, as large as the trunks of the giant trees. The sky itself was blackening, bleaching. When all this accumulated pain feeding on itself like a snake devouring its own tail, strengthening itself in a vicious circle, when all this pain collapses back down, there will be nothing left. No tree, no Ranma. Only a lost soul will plummet into abyss, unable to look into her former comrades' eyes, doomed to wander forever suffering the shame of her betrayal. "I only beg for a miracle," she whispered quietly, without hope, not knowing whom was she addressing: either Serenity the Elder, of some higher power above the indifferent gods and nagging ancestors. She bowed deeply. "Not for myself. Not for her. For those who are waiting for my help. For surviving to the end of this mission. I'm not asking for anything more. I don't need anything more. To get there, then return them back home all right." The girl pressed her head against the non-existent ground. "And, maybe... Maybe look in Akane's eyes again, over there, beyond the river..."

"I am powerless here," the long gone Queen replied, and her voice was harsh but not cold. "Do not forget, though, that this realm of frozen logic does have its own masters and its own loopholes."

The presence behind her shoulder disappeared: the ghost of Serenity had left her! And then... Inner Ranko reared up. There was an abyss yawning in front of/above her. An infinity filled with crystalline facets of velvet darkness and mirror shine moving methodically and orderly like a clockwork mechanism the size of universe. And this orderliness, this crystalline infinity was _gazing_ ·into her, with attention and indifference.

Kneeling, she stared back in horror shuddering from the _wrongness_ ·of this thing sitting where she was subconsciously expecting to see... Someone entirely different.

Then something had shifted and the girl was swept away by the hurricane of black ki whirling around her distant, material self that had suddenly caught up with her.

The monstrous charge of pain and suffering had almost reached critical mass, on the verge of plummeting down to pulverize the tree and everything on it. In the last possible moment Akane's eyes opened. Blinking a couple times, the dead girl stared up at Ranma standing over her corpse in a corona of black lighting with empty eyes and a smile of the sort that leaves kids mentally scarred for life.

"Nng...?" the deathly pale lips moaned inquiringly.

"Gah!" This was so surreal, so impossible that Ranma was completely thrown off. The stream of pain and despair faltered, destabilizing then dissipating in a mighty shockwave pushing the clouds aside and ruffling the giant tree crowns. Sun was shining again down from the deep-blue high-altitude sky.

Brya cautiously poked his head out of the portal. Then he hopped up to Ranma: "U... um, are you done?" He glanced at the sky fearfully. "The kaboom is canceled? For sure?" He nervously rubbed his chitin scythes against each other. "Because we still have to sew her back together and resurrect!"

"Sew together...? Resurrect...?" Ranma replied dumbly, feeling wrung out. What had she been doing just now? And why was the grass around torn and flattened like there had been a hippo prancing around the hollow? She waved these tiny, insignificant incongruities away. There was only room for one thought in her consciousness swimming like she had been hit with a dusty bag. It was something about Akane! The pink pervert was saying something important, about Akane!"

"Why, do you want to resurrect without sewing her back together?" the monsterabbit retorted in shock as he missed the point of her question completely. "Don't just stand there, hurry up. I didn't waste zombie-raising constructs on you for nothing!"

"Zombie-raising?" Ranma's eyes crossing, her brain locked up again. She stared dumbly at the top half of Akane, cut slightly askew, with intestines hanging out and all other corresponding things. It replied with a glare of confused irritation. She stared at the bottom half lying a the portal, the gory details towards her. The legs were flexing and twitching, feet kicking in the air. Ranma stared at the top half again. The bloodless face was frowning, a hoarse unintelligible moan coming out of her lips. The bloodied hands were clenching into fists and opening again.

"Zombie-raising...?" Ranma repeated dumbly.

(シーンブレイク)

2004 — August 18, 2011 — August 19, 2013 — December 14, 2013. Translated December 14, 2013.

 **Ding!** Tropes unlocked:  
Single-Biome Planet  
Heroic BSOD  
Portal Cut  
Wham episode

 **Author's notes:**

 **1**  
Ironically, the Piccolo saga is when the previously bright and kiddish Dragonball first turns dark, to become what is known in the West as "Z". Ranma is lucky to drop reading there and keep warm and fuzzy memories of the series.

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— Crystal  
— ryuumon  
— LawOhki  
— Orphus users (23 bugs so far)  
— Crystal  
— ryuumon  
— OSMQEP  
— poVitter  
— Orphus users (32 bugs so far)  
— Crystal  
— ryuumon  
— Orphus users (42 bugs so far)


	18. Rash Decisions

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled**

 **Chapter 18  
Rash Decisions**

"(...) but I'm going to warn you now that the solution might involve ... uh ... damage to human beings."

"Gosh!" The exclamation was hushed, drawn-out.

"Now you watch for that. When we come to a sheet which means damage, even maybe death, don't get excited. You see, Brain, in this case, we don't mind - not even about death; we don't mind at all. So when you come to that sheet, just stop, give it back - and that'll be all. You understand?"

"Oh, sure. But golly, the death of humans! Oh, my!"

(Isaac Asimov, "Escape!")

"Zombie-raising?" Ranma repeated dumbly.

"No, zombie-lowering," Brya replied cuttingly. Then he noticed that she was still in stupor, and offered a hasty explanation: "Well, you use it on a freshly croaked person, and here you go: an instant living dead, or zombie in other words... So one genius thought of using these on living people. He deserves a monument in his honor — well, there are monuments of him already erected in some places. In short, these formerly nigh useless constructs turned into an excellent save against sudden death. It saves your mind even if your brains are pulped. And even more, it allows to resurrect you even a month later. Considering how rare the means of resurrection present themselves, this part is really useful... You're lucky I have a resurrection construct with me. It's a pure chance, coupled with the fact that you are going along a chain of non-typical worlds choosing mostly these rare ones where magic works... But I only have one such construct, so don't you dare kicking the bucket on me. Understood?"

"So we can still save her?！" Ranma yelled, her smile shining brighter than sun.

"You, brya, finally got it!" The monsterabbit found this hilarious. "All right, take your half and let's hop out of here. Just don't forget the guts, lack of vital parts is the last thing we need... On the other thought, you grab the torso, I'll collect the guts myself. I'm not feeling like relying on you."

"Nng...?" the top half of Akane inquired, irritation clear in her moan. She started scraping her hands against the ground trying to get up.

"Oh, this is not lala, not at all!" Brya grew worried. "How shall we... Ah! That's it!" He let out a short cackle, then hopped closer, stretched one tentacle out, and without further ado grabbed onto Akane's left breast. She blink-blinked. A moment later her bloodless face distorted in rage, a hefty mallet materializing in her hand. Which mallet Brya snatched away with the flair of a circus magician. Then he brought it down onto the dead girl's forehead with all the oomph he could muster.

"Nnng..." She slumped with an idiotic smile, her eyes crossed.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Ranma growled fiercely as she lifted the monsterabbit up by the scruff of his neck.

"An-choo... Anesthesia!" he replied indignantly. "Or you'd rather let her see the presence of absence of her lower half?"

Ranma released him. "Couldn't you have done that a bit _gentler_?" she asked, still hostile.

"Are you kidding me? How else would you stun a _zombie_...? She's dead, no drug can affect her! Only her own unformalizable supernaturality..." Judging by the tone, he was pouting — not that one could tell, with his slit-like mouth framed with a fringe of mandibles. "Youngster these days, trying to teach _me_ ·of all things... All right, let's go." He carefully gathered the spilled internal organs into a bag, then swiftly disappeared in the portal opening.

Ranma was left in the company of the unresponsive top half of Akane. "Well, we have learned what we needed him for, didn't we?" she tried to joke awkwardly while looking into her loved one's glassy eyes. There was a lump stuck in her throat, ice crawling to and fro along her spine.

Ranma shuddered violently. She held the unnaturally light half of her wife carefully, acutely aware of the wrongness of her form. Sighing, she trudged towards the opening that cost them so much.

(シーンブレイク)

Rei was kneeling if front of the sacred fire. For the first time in her life it was just a ritual for her. A formality. For the first time she was doing the same thing as millions of priests all across the world who don't possess real spiritual power.

Because the fire wasn't alive anymore. Something immense had left the world leaving a subtle raw emptiness in its place.

For those who are able to sense.

(シーンブレイク)

After fiddling with the portal — he had to use Ranma's finger for that — Brya opened it towards sun, frosty air and a crystal clear mountain lake. The world of sky trees disappeared beyond a mirror wall forever. Together with their backpacks, Ranma realized belatedly.

Opening his chest, Brya started rummaging through it, from time to time producing various tools like forceps, scalpels or rusty saws. "What are you waiting for?" he addressed Ranma. "Go wash it!"

"Wash what?" Ranma didn't understand.

"Everything, wash everything!"Brya cackled pointing his chitin scythe at the blood-soaked bag. "There's a lot of adhering dirt. Do you want me to sew it all inside too, huh?"

"Oh!" Ranma got it, paling noticeably. She didn't even want to think about the contents of that bag, but she willed herself to move and lifted it up. She went to the lake.

"And don't put what you washed on the ground!" Brya shouted after her. "Bring it to the lobby, the floor here is sterile!"

The task, requiring accuracy and attention, felt like hell to the pigtailed girl. An ever-lasting hell. It's one thing to know, in theory, how much various guts human body contains inside it. It's entirely different to... A triple shudder.

That's not counting the two passes with the halves of her wife, to wash what did _not_ ·fall out, but was hanging out of the cut instead.

But she wasn't about to give up. Finally the hellish trial was over. Brya grabbed his tools and started eying the field of action. Him giggling hysterically, his middle eye twitching around, was not inspiring any optimism.

The monsterabbit sized it up this and that. Then he froze in indecision. "Hmm... Well, this is probably beyond my ability to patch in these field conditions." He scratched behind his ears.

Ranma's heart fell. "You can't do it?" she squeaked out, crestfallen.

"Can't do it...? Why, brya, I can. I can do it fine, it's just that some functions could fail to restore fully. My resurrection construct is fairly weak, you know. Unfortunately, it will start with unmaking radioactive dust particles in her lungs, and that takes a disproportionally large amount of energy. When did you manage to find so much radioactive dust?"

"It's from a Khas-eeschaeet," Ranma replied weakly, realizing just now how utterly careless they were with radioactivity. "We were chased by one, barely managed to get to the pyramid before it got to us."

"Oh these. Nasty juggernauts, you two are the first close-contact survivors I heard of. Just don't forget to undergo cleaning procedures as soon as possible, otherwise you'll die soon from lung cancer or something equally unfunny! It's not just radioactive, it contains trace amounts of plutonium. Which is highly toxic, for your information."

Ranma wasn't too disturbed by his words, if only because of fear for Akane not being resurrected properly.

The monsterabbit scratched behind his ears again. "So, back to our business. Never mind the intestines, I could just shorten them. But this thing thing they grow children in, it's damaged badly." Brya suddenly turned to Ranma and started looking at her, with unnerving intensity.

Ranma took an involuntary step back covering her belly with her arms protectively. I wasn't going to give birth anyway, she thought, making herself stop and meet her destiny face to face, like a man.

"All right... As we are on a spending spree anyway, we can as well blow it with style!" Brya proclaimed with fake cheer in his voice. "Let's see, I had a cloning construct somewhere..." He started rummaging through his chest again.

Ranma swallowed forcefully as she forced herself to approach him. To volunteer as a donor of the "thing they grow children in".

"Aha, here it is!" Brya fished a shiny silvery crystal out of the chest. He went towards Ranma purposefully. She squeezed her eyes shut, expecting anything to... A sharp pop returned her to reality forcing her to open her eyes. What she saw made her stumble and land on her derriere: there was her exact copy standing before her, up to the kung-fu slippers. The only difference was its hair, grayish white instead of fiery red.

"Auuu!" the copy proclaimed intelligently as she started slobbering. Then she got entangled in her own legs and fell onto her back limply like a bag of potatoes.

"Wu... What's that?" Ranma asked the monsterabbit, completely dumbfounded.

"Brya-huh?" He turned around to look at her. "Oh...! This, my friend, is our spare parts kit!" He met an uncomprehending look. "Well, of course I did not clone the mind due to ethical reasons!" he added, indignant at her lack of understanding. "Who do you take me for, huh?！"

"Muh... mind...?" Ranma echoed dumbly. This was too much for her.

Brya didn't deign to reply. He grabbed the mumbling and slobbering copy by her pigtail unceremoniously and dragged her to where Akane was lying, where he put her to use: rolling the undershirt up to her armpits, he pulled her pants down a bit, then took a big scalpel and started cutting her stomach open... "Gooo!" the copy said discontentedly, but otherwise she didn't even twitch.

Alas, Akane chose that exact moment to come to her senses. She was lying still for awhile, blinking and staring at the ceiling. Then she tried to say something, but it came out as an unintelligible "Nnng". Surprised, she slowly lifted a hand to her face to examine it. Seeing it covered in blood she grew alarmed and tried to jump up. She failed, of course, only her legs lying aside started flexing, scraping against the floor. Akane frowned, raised herself a bit on her elbows... and stared dumbly at her body below the waist. Or, more precisely, at the absence of such a thing. Then she saw it lying to the left. She tried to back away in fright. She failed to move again, only her legs bent at the knees. Akane continued staring at them, bending them and straightening again, until she was distracted by insane cackling from the right. Turning her head to look, she saw Brya busily eviscerating Ranma's copy.

"Agooo!" the slobbering copy said, smiling dumbly and looking through her with empty, glassy eyes.

Akane's features bloomed with an unhealthy grin conveying "oh joy, I finally went bonkers!". She squeezed her eyes shut tightly, and started shaking her head, probably trying to wake up.

Ranma finally shook her stupor off as she noticed her wife being awake. In a blink of an eye she was beside her soulmate, putting the other girl's head on her knees.

When Akane opened her eyes again, she found herself staring into Ranma's grayish-blue ones. "Nng nnnng?" she asked, trying again to rise on her elbows.

"No, don't look there!" Ranma gently pushed her back down. "And don't say anything!" She kissed her wife's forehead so that she never broke the eye contact. "Everything will be all right! Brya's so good at it, he'll fix you in a zip!" She smiled, showing confidence that was a bit strained and unnatural.

Brya chose that moment to erupt with an especially deranged cackling... Both girls turned to look at him with apprehension. Brya was tearing something big and recognizable out of the copy's abdomen. Then he proceeded to devour it noisily, his mouth slit moving in the most disturbing way. Ranma made a guttural growl, her fingers curling into claws as if she was strangling somebody.

"What?" Brya asked tersely. "It's the liver. She doesn't need it, her own is fine." Then he continued what he was doing, without batting an eye. The multitude of mouth mandibles held the diminishing bloody lump easily, leaving the insectile arms and tentacles free to do the main work of pulling out and sorting other organs that then went to a large tray.

"Nng, ng nng nnnng!" Akane said, frowning.

"I too feel like strangling him," Ranma agreed in a low voice as she willed her curled fingers to relax. "But he's saving your life. Without him I'd—" A memory hit her and she gasped. Shishi Hokou Dan! That's why the grass was all torn up and flattened! Shocked at her own terrible failure, Ranma blurted unthinkingly: "If not him, we both wouldn't be here anymore!"

"Ng?！"

Oh shi—, thought Ranma. Did I say that aloud?

She then tried to run a hasty damage control: "Will you forgive me...? I know, I have a duty. I must make it... But, I really couldn't live without you... I... well, I tried, but I just couldn't..." She fell into a sheepish silence not knowing what else to say.

"Nng!" Akane smiled at her. Her expression alone was enough to know what a word was that. It was " _baka_ ", uttered with such loving care that even the zombie muteness couldn't silence it.

Brya took up a dozen tools at once. He sized the field up. Then his little segmented arms blurred. The air was humming from rapid motions. Ranma stared at him in awe. Punching at amaguriken speeds is one thing, but performing surgery... Her respect for him grew by leaps and bounds: she finally saw him for who he was: a psycho, a jerk-ass, but also a _true_ ·master, belonging to the heights where madness becomes genius. Or genius becomes madness. In his own area of expertise he was no less a master than she was in martial arts.

And all the while Ranma was sitting holding Akane's head on her knees, not letting her to look down, and stopping the monsterabbit who seemed to have an urge to apply anesthesia via mallet.

"Done!" Brya said as he dusted his many small arms. Finally it was over, even if what felt like eternity in reality took barely ten minutes. "All right, listen here, cute guts. You don't have to be too careful, I've patched your spinal cord and pelvis up with superglue. They are now more durable than brand new!" He gathered his tools and went to the lake.

Ranma wanted to kiss his feet. To strangle him. To do anything for him. To punt him so hard that he'd not deorbit for a week.

Such is the power of a truly charismatic personality.

"Ng nnnng?！" Akane moaned indignantly as she rose up with awkward, wooden movements.

"That's right!" Ranma echoed. "Where's the resurrection?"

"Oh, don't you worry!" Brya called from the lake. "The resurrecting construct requires a world with a very specific set of properties. They don't work otherwise. Just search, brya, around for a magic-aligned world, I've noticed one not that far away. Enter it for a few minutes and it'll activate." He turned away to continue washing his tools in the lake.

"What will activate?" asked Ranma. "Where's that construct?"

"Nnng, nnnng!"

"I've sewn it inside, brya!" the monsterabbit called back without turning. "I'm not too fond of the idea of it getting lost somehow!"

"Ng...?" Akane stared inquiringly at her stomach.

"Inventor, brya," Ranma grumbled as she helped the stumbling Akane to keep upright by hooking her arm under the not quite dead girl's shoulder. "Let's go resurrect you already. You're growing cold, it feels creepy."

"N, nng?" Akane fixed her with a surprised look. She then looked down at her hand that Ranma was holding.

"So you don't feel anything?" Ranma asked her worriedly.

"Ng." Akane shook her head. Ranma handed her the medallion, and she began typing in a command, working sluggishly with her numb hands. It took her forever, but finally one of the dead end archways opened into darkness.

Priming her danger sense, Ranma led her wife outside, still holding her under the arm. It turned out to be quiet and peaceful there, and not so dark, after all. It was the sunlight from that lake world that had been preventing them from seeing the ominous gothic cathedral. Ravaged by time, it loomed silently under the cover of dark clouds, dominating a boundless graveyard they have found themselves in.

Many living dead in various states of decay roaming aimlessly with sepulchral moans weren't really diminishing the overall peaceful calm of this place.

"Ng!" Akane said in a voice similar to theirs as she shivered slightly.

Turning around sharply to a rustle from behind, Ranma saw her eviscerated copy approaching from the other side of the portal, lumbering woodenly. Ranma stepped aside, letting her go. The copy waddled hastily out to the graveyard. She stood there for a while, then started roaming among the tombstones, standing out of the crowd only by her undersirt soaked with fresh blood. Ranma looked at the exact replica of herself roaming peacefully among other restless, and shivered visibly.

"She is a zombie too?" Akane asked, surprise clear in her voice.

Ranma whirled to face her, breath catching from happiness.

"Ara!" Akane smiled in joy as she touched her face. "I can feel again...! How come I didn't even not—" She was silenced by a kiss from Ranma who went wild from joy.

"Mm, mmm," Akane noted some time later.

"Whu...?" Ranma asked, detaching from her reluctantly.

"I said, we are both girls now, did you forget that?" Akane reminded her playfully.

"Oops!" Ranma blushed fiercely. She tried to look at the ground but kept stealing involuntary glances at her wife. "I'm sorry. I, uh, got carried away and stuff." There was no particular guilt in her voice.

"Just look at you," Akane teased wantonly, drunk with joy. "All shy and proper, that so doesn't suit you!" She twirled giddily. "But that doesn't matter, because I'm alive! I! Am! Alive!" She jumped up onto a tombstone, starting to perform one of the more complex kata requiring great balance. Ranma was standing there eating the dancing girl with her eyes. Then she frowned.

"What?" Akane asked her, stopping. Then she pulled her shortened jacket up, to find a rough scar running across her abdomen. It was copying the jacket cut line perfectly. "Oh, this?" She waved all concerns away airily. "This is only until the next time we transform, it'll heal quickly then." She jumped down from the tombstone and started walking at Ranma, her gait more like dancing. "Or not. I don't care." She suddenly looked awkward, fumbling for words. "Ah, um, Ranma... Did you notice it yet? Your hair..."

Ranma pulled at her bangs with apprehension, her eyes crossed. Contrary to her expectations, she did not find any red there. She pulled her pigtail over her shoulder, only to stare at its grayish-white tip, dumbfounded. "Gah! What is this?"

"It seems your hair went completely gray," Akane replied with a calming smile. "I heard of such things happening to people who have suffered immense grief... I didn't think I'd see it with my own eyes... Oh Ranma, I'm so sorry."

"Oh, don't mind it," Ranma reassured her hastily. "This is too until the next time we transform, it'll heal quickly then," she parroted her wife. "And, you know, I don't care too. I look cooler like this!"

A wave of euphoria and feeling incredibly alive is not a state conductive to making well thought out, considered decisions. So when Akane opened the medallion looking like she suddenly got a great idea, Ranma didn't even think of stopping her. Just continued to stare at her lovingly, quietly going nuts from happiness. She came to her senses only when it became obvious that there was something wrong going on with the portal.

"I don't get it," Akane mumbled in a frightened voice. "What `powering up`? I set it clearly to..." She started tapping the keys rapidly, often missing in her panicked state.

Meanwhile, the mirror plane of the portal continued darkening, flashing with transient crimson veins.

"Don't screw it up!" Ranma hollered in horror as the realization hit her.

The portal arch was now resembling an ink-black abyss filled with crimson flashes and lightning bolts. Akane stared at it with rising fear, then at the medallion screen, then at the portal again.

"Brya-huh?" the monsterabbit noticed what was happening around him, torn out of his musings. "Oh, brya... Young lady, when did you forget that power consumption is proportional to the median of the ryu-metadistances to the root world times four?"

"Try telling that to her." Ranma pointed at Akane. "I know it already. Grossly unlinear, must move in a series of small hops and stuff." The portal, meanwhile, was beginning to glow dull crimson. The heat was oppressive, reflecting back at the three from all directions. It reminded her too much of that magma world, only this time their Senshi magic wasn't around to save them from cooking like slices of bread in a toaster. "Akane, would you cancel it already, whatever you were trying to do?"

"I'm trying!" the frantically tapping girl replied, almost crying. "It just won't cancel!"

The floor started vibrating, a quiet chime coming from the walls. The crimson heat coming from everywhere at once was already painful, yet it continued to rise.

"Funny thing, that," the monsterabbit noted with out of place enthusiasm. "I never saw a portal gathering up that much oomph." He made a hop in place and scratched behind his ears with his scythe. "Oh! Tee-hee-hee-hee! This is much cooler than your measly run-ou-of-the-mill three-orders-of-magnitude overload! Fascinating! I had always been dreaming to see what happens to the portal when it is pushed past is endurance limits!" It was easy for him to be so inappropriately cheerful, as he seemed to still keep his heat resistance.

"Where were you trying to get to, for it to go rampant like that?" the white-haired girl asked her wife, cringing and trying to cover her face. Without her shirt, her bare shoulders and arms were feeling the sting of heat full force. The situation wasn't looking like it would end well.

"I..." the harried Akane looked up from the medallion, her eyes wild. "I wanted to call back home... Have to ask Ami..."

Ranma's eyes went wide. What was she thinking?！ To go back, it's not just one or two steps. It's... She looked at the red-hot, flashing arch with trepidation.

"Attention!" the mechanical voice sounded suddenly. "The power consumption of the synchronization process had exceeded the allowable limit! The connection will be terminated forcibly!"

Both the girls let out breathes of relief.

"Error!" It seems, Murphy held sway even here. "Unable to terminate the operation! Ahs-Asch access level is required, but the current system access level is Ahs!" The vibration, meanwhile, continued to grow stronger.

"What did you do?！" Ranma cast a murderous glare at her wife.

"I don't know! I just don't know!" the other girl screeched in panic, assaulting the keys like a rabid woodpecker on steroids.

"Unable to execute your command 'Cancel'," the mechanism replied to all her efforts. "Ahs-Asch access level is required, but your current access level is Ahs-Asch."

She boggled, uncomprehending, then blink-blinked loudly.

"This iss just hilarious!" Brya exploded with glee. "So that was what they meant when they wrote about 'unlimited access to the portal network' for those who is collecting the tokens! Ee-hee-hee-hee! So the legends about the Zeroth one's epic absent-mindedness are true! That's one impressive screw-up! It looks like he delegated his access level for portals to anyone who holds the tokens... Oh, I see! I see! His commands most likely could only be canceled by him personally, regardless of the access level! This node is really going kaboom, and you can't do anything to stop it!" he finished on an optimistic note and erupted with mad giggling.

Panicking, Akane tried to open an another portal, no matter where to, just to escape the pyramid that was ready to explode. But everything was in vain: the mechanism just notified her politely of her command being queued.

The floor was vibrating so strongly it made their teeth ache. The walls sang like overstressed crystal. "Warning!" the mechanism ranted, "Critical overload! Current power rating is 208 percent of the endurance limit! Cancel the connection immediately!"

Ranma grabbed Akane, pressing tightly against the frantically tapping girl's back. Partly to lessen the painful heat radiated by the walls, partly as a farewell hug. It wasn't going to be long now...

BA-BOOM‼！ the overheated surface of the portal sounded as it burst. The heat went away, leaving the girls in peace and... Wait, Ranma thought, still hearing the walls sing and feeling the floor vibrate. This doesn't look like we are dead yet! She opened her tightly shut eyes.

Indeed, they weren't. On the other side of an open portal there was some sort of dimly lit room and a spooked Ami, her eyes wide, looking up from a workbench.

"Ya eeeeediot," Ranma breathed out in relief, squeezing her wife in a tight hug. She felt both their hearts beating rapidly in unison, both girls shaky from adrenaline. "Why did you have to risk like that?"

"Connection established," the mechanism reminded them of the harsh reality. "Overload warning. Connection will be forcibly terminated in 150 seconds."

"But... But it did work in the end, didn't it?" Akane replied nervously in the gloom. The only light was coming from the dimly lit lab on the other side. "Damn it, I didn't think we'd have so little time. We have to ask about so many things." She reached with her finger towards the portal plane warily. The metallic sheets forming the floor on the other side were melting along its edge, hissing and sputtering. There was a noticeable smell of burnt plastic.

"Careful!" Ranma grabbed her by that arm. "You could lose a hand there!"

Several JSDF soldiers burst into the hall, bringing more light from an open door. They started pointing their assault rifles at the portal.

"Hold your fire!" Ami stopped them, finally shaken out of her shock. "These are allies!"

The soldiers lowered their guns but were still eying the smoldering aperture warily.

"How..." Ami continued, still having a hard time believing her eyes. "How did you reach here? It shouldn't be possible!"

"Ask Miss Inventor here," Ranma quipped pointing at Akane. "She almost blew us up with this portal."

Ami gasped. "So you did...? You can't risk like that!" she berated them sternly. "Wait a moment." Grabbing a long metallic rod in one hand and some sort of device in another, she approached carefully, testing the space in front of her with the rod and looking at the gadget. After poking the portal surface in several places, which made the end of the rod glow red-hot, she finally lifted her eyes and proclaimed: "Raise your feet higher if you want to step through. The heating effect fades exponentially from the edge, it's safe after the first thirty centimeters." She put the rod down on the nearest workbench. The end was dimming quickly, smoking a bit.

"Connection will be forcibly terminated in 100 seconds," the mechanical voice reminded them.

"How's your progress?" Ami asked them hastily.

"We only have two of these 'dragonballs' to go," Ranma said, pulling up the bag of tokens hanging from the drawstring of her pants. She moved surreptitiously in front of Akane trying to hide the other girl's bloody state. "Give us a few hours and we'll be able to summon that zeroth one. Usagi doesn't have to wait long!"

"If he agrees to help us," Akane tried to burst her bubble.

"Well, there's that," Ranma said calmly, making it clear that she _chose_ ·to be hopeful.

"But we still don't really understand this 'leading temporal hyperloop'," Akane added worriedly. "Its 'nav-points' are often saddled with weird conditions. He helped us greatly, but it's still too vague." She pointed at the monsterabbit, who was bouncing in place lively.

"Hi, toots!" Brya called waving his chitin scythe.

Ami started, making an involuntary step back as she noticed their third companion, barely notiveablt in the dark hall. The soldiers clutched their assault rifles tighter.

"That's all," Ranma finished with strained cheer. "Everything is fine, we are all right, the perv will explain anything we need. Bye-bye, give our regards to the others!" She waved. She froze, sweating profusely. The awkward silence began stretching thin: the portal wasn't closing.

"Connection will be forcibly terminated in 50 seconds," the mechanical voice reminded them. "Danger, safety mechanisms inoperable. Make sure that the portal does not cross living organisms or material assets."

"Drats." Akane let out a frustrated sigh. "I hoped so much that you... Ami? Are you feeling well?"

"Is that blood?" the girl genius asked with growing worry as she looked intently at Ranma's undershirt.

"Huh...? Eh...?" Ranma fidgeted, as if caught red-handed. Casting a glance down at her undershirt, she pulled at its bottom edge. With some effort, the blood-caked cloth came off her skin. Ranma's features reflected a startled "Oh shi—". Yeah, he managed to hide Akane behind him, all right, Ranma thought with a mental equivalent of a facepalm. Keeping it in mind that he was bloodied himself? Not so much. Should have pushed the bunny to the front!

"And why is your hair white?" Ami added, paling. Her eyes gained a feverish focus, capturing all the details at once: Akane's jacket cut short, both girls' clothing being soaked with blood. "What... What had happened to you two?"

"Nothing, brya!" the monsterabbit blurted out, trying to discharge the situation. "This incompetent here cut herself with the portal in half. But only a bit, so don't worry! I, brya, had already glued and sew her together, resurrected her, so she's like brand new now! Not even a trace of that radiation poisoning she caught while running from khas-eeshchaeets!"

Ranma had a sudden craving for a rabbit skin rug. Who asked him open his rotten mouth!

Unexpectedly, Ami turned white as a sheet, her breathing ragged and quickened, her pupils shrinking into pinpricks. It's nothing, Ranma was reassuring herself, the portal will close, _any moment now_. She'll be fine. She'll calm down eventually. But this pink asshole, I'll...

Ami breathed in deeply, shakily. Then breathed out. Suddenly, she stepped through the portal, joining them.

"Ami-chan, what are you doing?" Akane was horrified.

"You really shouldn't," Ranma said. "We'll make it by ourselves."

"I..." Ami wasn't in her right mind. "It's all my fault. I really should have—"

"Go back!" Akane tried to convince her. "It's very noble of you, but you really shouldn't. We—"

"Danger," the mechanical voice piped in. "Premature connection break. Synchronization subsystem failure."

Akane cast a helpless look at the portal aperture. It was rapidly growing over with crimson veins, burning a white-hot molten scar into the floor. Her eyes widening, she jerked Ami towards herself, turning her around and covering the lab-coat clad girl with her body.

There was a thundering flash of searing heat, followed by dead silence. Only the rapid, slowing breathing of the three girls and one monster cackling accompanied with bone scraping sounds could be heard in the pitch black darkness.

"Connection terminated abnormally," the mechanical voice summed up. "Aperture 3 is locked due to error, temporal synchronization circuit not found. Emergency repair crew estimated time of arrival is error, aperture 3 not found thousand years. You can use the remaining functional apertures 5 and 7."

"Everybody's all right?" Ranma asked as she lit a small ball of ki in her palm. This required some strain: she was worn out, in addition to air being so hot it was too much even for her.

As always, the mirror hall turned a single light source into a faerie infinity filled with hazy lights.

"I... I am fine," Ami replied as Akane helped her to her feet. "I'm sorry... I'm sorry, it's all my..." She stumbled, disoriented by the oppressive heat combined with the illusion of floating in boundless space. The shock of her own action, so sudden and rash, wasn't helping either.

"Don't worry, you simply didn't want us to kill ourselves," Ranma reassured her awkwardly, while wondering what had caused such an extreme reaction. Was Ami holding herself guilty of something? "Thank you."

"Rrranma!" Akane hissed.

"What did I say?" The white-haired girl backed away. "You'd better give her our medallion, there's no use fighting."

The girl genius took their curse and salvation, two in one, their Ariadne's thread. Pulling her own medallion from inside her blouse, she dove into work. Switching back and forth between the two devices, she wasn't reacting to outside stimuli. The mirror infinity gained multitudes of greenish stars from the tiny screens and nebulae of her face lit with greenish light. Ranma killed her ki ball with relief.

"Do you understand what this entails?" her wife laid into her, trying to keep her voice down not to disturb their sudden companion, but none the less vehemently. As a result, she was hissing like a viper whose tail was stepped upon. "She's flimsy without her transformation! Do you understand what would've happened to her if she was with us through all these places?！ She won't survive a day of such travel! Not to mention she isn't trained to walk that long!"

"We'll carry her," Ranma replied flatly. "In turns, if necessary. After all, she isn't that much heavier than a backpack." Her eyes widened in sudden realization. "Oh, crap! We have to go back, to take our backpacks! We're like naked without supplies!"

"You're wanting too much!" Brya stopped her short. "Did you think your escapade with such an extra-long jump was without consequences? There's no way back now."

What Ranma said in reply was quiet, but expressive and heart-felt. She then turned to Ami: "Maybe there is one yet?"

"Don't you distract her!" Akane hissed into her ear.

Ami did not react at first, concentrated on working with two medallions at once. She kept wiping sweat from her forehead. Then she straightened up with effort, stumbling as she turned to face Ranma. "I'm sorry. The sub-continuum... This hall... In short, its position in the... relevant frame of reference is affected by the coordinates of the last world it was connected to. Usually this effect is negligible, but..." She wiped her sweaty forehead with a clumsy, ill-coordinated motion, then rubbed the bridge of her nose. "By connecting the 'lobby' to our world, you shifted it err... kind of sideways, thus removing it far from both the node and all the previously visited worlds... Including our one... I'm sorry, I can't think straight in this heat..."

"Simply speaking, this lobby was thrown beyond reach relative to your backpacks," Brya explained. "It's kinda like releasing a stretched rubber band: there's no telling where it ends up. So, to get back you'd need to make such a long jump that the machinery simply won't survive it. Won't survive at all, brya. Your supplies are lost forever, you can write them off."

"Bugger," Ranma swore. "So we can't return now? And we broke that pyramid, on top of that."

"Oh, don't worry," the monsterabbit reassured her hastily as he rubbed his scythes together with a bone scraping sound. "When the node controller confirms there are no more creatures or material assets inside the lobby, it'll simply terminate it. It had created a new one already. You see—"

"Let's move forward!" Akane interrupted him. "We can tolerate air this insufferably hot, but Ami-chan is on the verge of a heat stroke!" She helped to steady the swaying girl.

"Right!" Ami shook her head, droplets of sweat flying from the ends of her hair. "The matter contained in this thermodynamically closed microcosm consists of only the air and our bodies. For the thermal radiation, this volume equals to an infinite space filled with very hot air. Our bodies are gaining significantly more energy than the roughly three hundred watts they radiate. We are heating up constantly... We need to... leave..." Supported by Akane, she began entering a command. Her fingers weren't too cooperating.

"So, where to?" Ranma inquired with worry. Ami was no Akane, of course, but she was on the verge of fainting. Who knew what vital detail she might miss? There was no choice, however. Ranma himself wouldn't risk trying, Akane... His wife had such a track record that no, thanks. Maybe Brya... She cast a side glance at the cackling monster scraping his chitin scythes together. Thanks, but not this one too. Let's let Ami do it, even if she's only partly lucid.

"The shortest graph..." Ami croaked. "Optimized for speed... Collect the two remaining..."

Ranma didn't like the sound of "Optimized for speed" Translated from the Scientific, it meant "we're taking a short-cut". Which could lead them into trouble. Oh, to the hell with beating around the bush. It _will_ ·lead them into trouble. But did they have a choice? Their two comrades were waiting for rescue. And while Usagi was holding up somehow — barely — Setsuna's fate remained unknown. They could only do their best pushing forward.

At first, they opened the portal into a world where futuristic constructs towered over green grass. Weird creatures making Brya look ordinary were wandering under blooming trees.

"Oh lala!" The pink one perked up. "Do you mind if I disembark here? Such a luck!"

"Go on, scram." Ranma slapped his backside. "And, err, take care!"

"Thank you!" Akane bowed to him.

"Well, bye!" Brya waved them as he approached the portal, sizing it up. "Bye-bye!" Then suddenly, he turned around and added: "Your liver was tasty, tee-hee!"

As a result, he barely avoided being pummeled by Ranma, despite all her gratitude.

"What's so important about this liver?" Akane barked at him. "Why are you so fixated on it?"

"Well, that's the thing..." The monsterabbit suddenly grew very embarrassed. "It's unseemly of a scientist of course... But with all this magic around... There's a... bryahem... belief floating around, that someone who eats the liver of a young virgin maiden, while she is still alive, will gain unheard of luck and unsurpassed charisma. Luckily, there were no such villains for a long time..." The monsterabbit grew even more embarrassed. "Well, I thought... Such an occasion... I really need some extra charisma, with people beating up on me often..." He fell silent, rubbing his scythes together in embarrassment.

"What?！" Ami was shifting her horrified gaze between her comrades.

"Oh, I see," Akane replied with an exasperated sigh. "But it was in vain, we are married for some time, and, err..." She fell into embarrassed silence as well.

"What, he did it as a girl too?" Brya exclaimed with disbelief. "With another guy?！"

"I DID NOT!" Ranma roared, her voice catching, her knuckles whitening.

"Oh. It's all right, then." Brya let out a sigh of relief. "You got me worrying for a moment. Bye then, I'll go test my new charisma!" He hopped out hastily: the portal wasn't especially stable now. The recent overload didn't do the mechanism any good, it was whining about various failures and spewing harsh warnings, making one feel like getting out of here.

Waving them for the last time, the pink person merrily bunny-hopped away. The last thing the girls saw before the portal closed was the long-suffering monsterabbit sailing through the sky after an attempt to converse with some fuzzy, white and kawaii local.

"There ain't no liver that could help someone like him," Ranma stated in the darkness.

"Where were we... Erm..." Despite some cool air getting in while the portal was open, Ami felt her consciousness slipping. "We are... incredibly lucky. Or there's some attraction towards the token... No matter... There should be one in this world..." She had to enter the command several times due to mistyping.

The fact that portal had opened was recognizable only by crimson veins sparkling weakly in one of its corners. The plane was pitch black, with not a slightest hint of light reaching from beyond it. The hall, though dark, had a hint of hazy light, an endless space filled with greenish dots like fireflies as the medallion screen reflected in the multitude of mirror facets.

The portal looked nothing like it. It was like a dark hole cut in the night. Ranma felt hair standing on the back of her neck as the three girls headed for this ominous, pitch-black surface. By some reason it was feeling like a threshold of infinity for her. Like a black hole. She was feeling that once they step through it, they could never return.

Apprehensive, Ranma touched the portal with her finger It felt like a weak electric jolt, but her finger was still there when she pulled it back.

"It's just malfunctioning," Ami reassured as Akane lifted her limp form up bridal style. "Safety filters treating visible light as hazardous"

Cursing her frayed nerves playing tricks on her, Ranma stepped through, with Akane at her side.

(シーンブレイク)

2004 - June 6, 2011. Translated November 14, 2012, corrected December 16, 2013.

(シーンブレイク)

End of Arc Two

 **Ding!** Tropes unlocked:  
No Dead Body Poops  
Only Mostly Dead  
Our Zombies Are Different

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— Crystal  
— ryuumon  
— OSMQEP  
— Orphus users (23 bugs so far)  
— Shadow Wolf, for the Original English version of the Asimov quotation.


	19. Blindly through Darkness

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled**

 **Arc Three  
Onward, over the Event Horizon**

 **Chapter 19,  
Blindly through Darkness**

The girls stepped onto hard, flat bare ground shrouded in darkness, under a dark sky lit with flashes of rolling auroras.

The portal closed with a sharp click, cutting off a piece of Ranma's kung-fu slipper.

The gray-haired girl looked around, searching for any signs of danger. She took Ami's words about cutting short close to heart. Well, the scientific analogue of such.

Akane busied herself with Ami who slumped to the ground, recovering slowly from the verge of heat stroke. The studious girl was dressed almost as inappropriately as Akane had been at the start of their journey: a short wrap skirt, a white lab coat thrown over a conservative blouse. Her low-heeled house shoes would rub her feet raw after the first half hundred kilometers. Not a problem, Akane corrected herself. Ami won't be walking, she'll be riding her and Ranma in turn. She cast a worried look at Ranma, who was standing with her eyes closed, her face lifted up towards the dark sky filled with weird rolling lights, like multi-colored auroras interspersed with a scattering of nebulas.

"Something is wrong?" asked Akane.

Ranma opened her eyes, blinked rapidly, then turned to her, visible in darkness as a vague black shape with only eyes glinting. "Well, not so much wrong..." she drawled, unsure. "Try to listen. To the magic, I mean."

Akane, in turn, closed her eyes, trying to cast her mundane senses aside. It wasn't easy: she was practically bubbling with energy and fullness of life. But she wasn't one to give up so easily. And finally... "Whoa!" Her eyes flew open as soon as she 'caught the right wave'. "The very air here is filled with magic, to abnormal degree. And this magic is... biting, for the lack of a better word. Also there is something unpleasant about it, like a fleeting smell of carrion on a sunny day."

"That it does," agreed Ranma. "Check also your connection to the asteroid."

"What for?" Akane frowned, concentrating. "What could... Wait a minute. It's gone!" She turned to the pigtailed girl. "I mean, it's completely gone, as if it wasn't even there! And it's not an anti-magic zone, I can feel magic just like back at home or in that lava world. But there's a prominent emptiness in place of my power!"

Ranma nodded. "Right. So it's the same story as with me and the sun." She lifted her eyes towards the sky. There were just a few very bright stars visible through the auroras, scattered chaotically across the sky. "And the stars are wrong, there's nothing even remotely familiar. If this is Earth, it should have been moved hell knows where. Maybe to the other end of the galaxy." She stood there for a bit longer, listening to the invisible. "You know, I don't like this place. There are tons of power floating around but it's all dried up, and feels like... like it's smelling of carrion somehow. I don't think a human would be able to use it. Not safely for their health, anyway."

The girls cast a cautious look around. The flat plain was drowning in darkness, stretching to an indistinct, blurry horizon. The ground was dry and hard like concrete, with tufts of hard, prickly grass growing here and there. The warm air was slightly stale and deadly still, which felt highly unnatural amidst a boundless open plain. There was dead silence, like they were in a crypt. No insect chirping, no grass rustling, nothing. Finally sure there was nothing moving around, Ranma tore a blade of grass out. She had to make a noticeable effort, even with her strength. She chewed on it... And promptly started gagging, cursing and spitting.

"Idiot!" Akane snapped at her. "What if it is deadly poisonous?！"

"More likely, deadly noxious. Blarg. Yeech. Vile stuff. Dry too. Did this hay dry up standing?"

"Well, if it is soaked with the local magic... Brr. I want to get out of here."

"You're right," the gray-haired girl agreed. "Let's move it. Ami, are you good?"

"I... Yes, I'm all right," the other girl responded, a bit dazedly, as she stood up. "I... I'm sorry. I acted thoughtlessly, letting emotions rule me..." She hung her head, laden with shame. "And now, I will be slowing you—"

"Naw, no sense regretting it now," Ranma interrupted her self-incrimination. "What is done, is done. Come on, mount Akane, and let's go."

"Why me?" Akane objected teasingly, more from a desire to argue rather than having any real objections.

Ranma paused for a moment. She couldn't tell them about the urge to protect, even at the cost of her own life that grew to irrational proportions, becoming simply overpowering. But there was a way to protect her loved one: if she is carrying, that excludes her from active fighting!

Finally she found a suitable lie: "Well, who's the freshest among us, barely half an hour since being resurrected?"

In truth, a corner of her consciousness not awed yet from happiness to the point of losing critical outlook on her wife, was aware that Akane wasn't in the right mind to watch around thoroughly. But there was one thing even more important: to carry Ami by himself meant to let Akane guard and shield them! Ranma's very nature was rebelling against this.

"Wait!" Ami exclaimed. "That monster wasn't embellishing, then?" She turned to Akane.

"That's..." Her bubbling enthusiasm dimmed a bit. "That's true. I—"

"Whatever happens," Ranma said with forceful conviction, prompting Ami to turn towards her. "Even if she begs, don't give her this accursed medallion!"

"Hey," Akane protested weakly.

"Because," Ranma continued with the same conviction, "she had cut herself in half with the portal once. I... I almost died with her. Don't let her anymore. Even if she won't be switching the portal while leaning out of it... No. The next time she'll open it into an underground sea, or into deep space... I don't want to lose her forever..." She clenched her fists, scarce manly tears welling up in her eyes. "Because it hurts, you know."

Quiet like a mouse, Akane bent down, inviting Ami to climb on. The girl genius did just that. Akane hooked her arms around the other girl's thighs. Ami put her arms around Akane's neck, holding the open medallion in her left hand, while working the keyboard with her right one. It wasn't very comfortable for both of them. Ami had to crane her neck, looking past Akane's head, while Akane had to roll her head aside. But it made working on the go possible, without the need to stop.

They stood like that for a while. Ami was tapping furiously, Akane was casting glances at the screen hanging right under her nose.

"Well, where shall we head?" Ranma inquired. This standing in place looked a bit weird for her. Not to mention the rising urge to get the hell away from this dark plain. The unnatural silence in the unnaturally still air was unnerving.

"I don't understand," Ami replied, her voice crestfallen. "No targeting available...? But the token must be in this world! But there is no transport node here... And the portal doesn't open again!" She was starting to panic. "Is this a wrong world? Where did I lead you to? It looks..." Her voice caught. "It looks like I led you into a trap! It was a jump with no return! The system can't find even a single nav-point!"

"What about the loop?" Ranma interrupted her. "Is it closed? Or is it not?"

"It's closed. But..."

"That means we'll make it through alive," Ranma said with conviction. "It's very simple stuff: if it's closed, then go on and you'll make it. If it's not, it means you're going towards a certain death and have to turn... Try, ah, running in circles." She suddenly realized she shouldn't have mentioned death so casually. Casting a wary side glance at Akane, she was relieved to see the other girl haven't reacted, just standing there with a sullen look.

"Oh, I see." Ami calmed down. She was thinking on this new information for a while. Then she started tapping the keys with one hand, an unhealthy glint in her eyes. Initially, she acquired this rare but useful skill thanks to her habit of working with computers while holding a sandwich in her other hand. She perfected it while operating the Mercury computer, which she had to hold in her left hand.

Akane kept squinting at the screen at first, then she looked away, wary that her head could start spinning from this flickering of unfamiliar symbols and diagrams.

"Here," Ami finally said as she pulled her hand away from the tiny keyboard. "This should help, I think."

Akane looked back at the screen. There was a glowing line slowly rotating across the circular screen, coming from its center. "Is this a radar?" she asked. Ranma grew intrigued and walked up to them to look over their shoulders.

The line, meanwhile, reached the bottom part of the circle, and started leaving a trail of densely packed radial lines that were dimming slowly.

"No," Ami started to object. "The principle behind it is completely... But you may consider it a radar of sorts. There are no distances, the system provides only one bit of information. And the polling rate is painfully low..." Seeing incomprehension on Ranma's face, she elaborated to popularize: "It's the same as running in circles, only the medallion does everything for us. It highlights directions that we can use to survive and reach our goal."

Meanwhile, the line finished its first rotation, leaving behind a slowly fading sector roughly a fourth of the circle wide.

"It's too bad we can't make it scan faster," Ami complained. "The loop state is checked at a fixed rate, approximately three times per second."

"Meaning," Ranma inquired, "if we set it to circle faster, it'll start jumping in intervals large enough for us to stumble across a small zone of deadly danger?"

Akane boggled at her like she suddenly grew a second head.

"Exactly," Ami affirmed. "You have a grasp on this... Akane, we can go now. Turn one hundred forty degrees to the right.

Akane obliged, and the picture on the screen turned around its center, together with the painfully slow scanning line, and the highlighted sector, which was pointing forward now.

"It acts like a compass," Ami explained. "Displaying everything relatively to direction you hold it pointed at."

Akane started striding forward, glancing at the screen from time to time.

"You see?" Ranma addressed Ami as she walked next to them, her eyes scanning the darkness tensely. "Don't you dare saying that you led us into a trap. Even more so that you'd slow us down. Just imagine us stumbling blindly here, not knowing what to do without you. No, we'd carry you gladly even if you were a hundred kilogram fatso." She let out a forced giggle.

Without breaking her stride, Akane slammed her heavy boot into Ranma's tailbone. Ranma let out a howl of hurt indignation and shut up. "He got not even a shadow of tact," the girl mount muttered under her breath.

Ranma kept pouting for whole three minutes. Then she started stealing glances at her wife again, intoxicated with joy. The shock of Ami suddenly joining the team proved to be much less than the shock of... Naw, to heck with it. She wasn't going to dig through these memories. It was enough that Akane was here, striding alongside her. Alive!

For Akane the recent events were still feeling like some bad dream. She was pushing forward with a spring in her step, barely restraining the energy that was overflowing her. She was feeling like she had been born anew — which wasn't really that far from reality.

A hour passed like that. The flat, almost lifeless ground was still stretching monotonously under the strange dark sky filled with auroras. Only Akane's firm footsteps and Ranma's barely audible gait were breaking the dead silence. Both the martial artists weren't inclined to talk. They were just striding forward, feeling the live presence of each other at their side. Ranma was subconsciously afraid to break the fragile magic of the moment by blurting something inappropriate and thus dispelling this wonderful reality like a dream. Akane have fallen into an unthinking state, letting the feeling of being alive fill every part of her mind.

Ami was deeply engrossed in her own medallion, digging through the reference materials methodically in her attempt to learn more about the world they found themselves in. Akane was holding the one acting as a radar.

Yet another hour passed. The dark plain was still stretching on, as flat and oppressively full of vague menace. There was not a slightest change, not a tiniest bump nor shrub. The sole exception was the sector widening a bit. Ami tried to use this to calculate how far they had to go, but the results were inconclusive. Too large an uncertainty, from hours to days.

"Stupid me," Ranma berated herself in a hoarse whisper. "Why didn't I think of it..."

"Think of what?" Akane cast a worried glance at her.

"Well, you see..." Ranma admitted with embarrassment. "I haven't had a drop of water since the morning, and there we are, in a land with no water again.

"We had a whole lake all to ourselves!" exclaimed Akane. She even stopped from the surprise. "And you didn't drink, you idiot?"

"Well, I was... distracted then," the gray-haired girl admitted.

"Ah," Akane could only say. Judging by how well she was feeling, she wasn't going to feel thirsty for a long time.

A few minutes later, Ami suddenly asked them to stop. Her voice sounded so alarmed that the two martial artists tensed. Akane cast a side glance at the screen. The line was filling a glowing sector, as usual, as it crawled across the forward-facing part. But there was a dark chip in that sector now. One of the radial lines remained unlit.

"Something deadly ahead?" Ranma asked in a hushed voice. She didn't want to disturb the creepy silence.

"I don't know," Ami replied in an equally hushed voice as she slid down to the ground, to let Akane stretch. "Let's stay here and check. Maybe it was an interference... No, wait." She started tapping the keys, and soon the line stopped circling. It was now going back and forth like a windshield wiper over the forward quarter. "Here, It has a better resolution now. There's no need to check the rear-facing area."

The three girls held their breath, watching the screen. Three times had the line crossed the forward-facing sector, and three times did it leave a dark chip on the glowing field.

"A death zone, for sure," Ranma breathed out, her voice trembling. "At least it's something immobile."

"Let's go around it," Akane suggested in such an airy tone like if it was a play for her. "Just give it a wide berth. Turn to go along the center of the right side of this sector of life, it seems wider."

Ami mounted Akane again. They went on. The oppressive darkness and dead silence were feeling much more ominous now. What was it out there, hidden in the dark, that two Anything-goes masters had no chance against that unseen menace? Ranma reminded herself that the 'safe' directions meant only a chance of victory, telling nothing about would it be a safe walk or a fight at the limit of their abilities.

The dark 'sector of death', on the other hand, meant a complete absence of any chances for survival.

Some ten minutes later, as Ami kept watching the dark gap to widen and shift to the side, she concluded that the zone of death was a few hundred meters across. It remained unknown if it was a field of deathtraps there, or a single something that could sense them from such a distance. Fortunately, there was no need to check.

Unfortunately, dark gaps started spawning like mushrooms after a rain. And some of them were _moving_. Ami wore her fingers against the keyboard trying to triangulate them. As she explained briefly, distracted by her concentration, the 'radar' showed patterns that formed from both their own movement and the movement of the unseen death, marking likely intersections. Which, although simplifying the decision making, was making the readings treacherous. This was most noticeable when the travelers were changing direction. The pattern of sectors of life flowed then, changing in ways most unpredictable. Ami explained as she wiped icy sweat from her forehead that a dark gap _ahead_ ·could mean a fast thing approaching _from behind_ ·if their courses were intersecting somewhere ahead.

And all of that in dead silence, amidst a featureless plain submerged in darkness. However were the martial artists straining their hearing, there was not a slightest rustle from the yawning unknown around them.

The line was slowly, painfully slowly creeping back and forth, weaving its treacherous, ever changing pattern of light and darkness.

Ranma shivered. What was it out there, that he and Akane, with all their experience and ki working normally, would stand no chance? Things exploding upon death into all-dissolving acid, like ones in that damned movie? She wanted to circle her wife like a guard dog, ready to die but protect its master. She was holding herself back somehow, but still kept changing her positions, keeping to the left flank, then to the right and back.

"We are going like Ripley with her motion sensor," Akane chose this moment to comment, as she glanced at the screen.

Ranma cast a sideways glance at her wife: was she reading her thoughts? This coincidence was unnerving.

Akane added: "Everything is as vague, you can't figure the readings, and they keep creeping in closer... Unseen..." Judging by her voice quavering, the dread finally got to her, piercing the euphoric haze.

So focused they were on expecting danger, that they didn't notice when the dark sectors grew sparse, disappearing gradually to the sides. The sector of light was widening faster, threatening to become a half-circle. It was dawning on the horizon to the right of their course, filling the sky with pinkish tinged gray twilight. They could see a bit farther now, but not much. The horizon was still hidden in a strange, blurry haze.

The dawn was brightening quickly, turning into a blinding spot. Soon, a tiny bluish-blinding disc crawled up from the haze, painting the sky a gentle green color. The auroras faded to near invisibility. A few stars remained visible, they were just that bright.

Ranma stopped to scrutinize the newly revealed luminary. Then she concentrated, closing her eyes to focus on flows intangible for the mortal sight.

"This thing is definitely not the Sun," proclaimed the gray-haired pig-tailed girl. "It's magical, and it's much closer than even the Moon. I'd say, it orbits Earth."

"And you can feel all of that?" Akane was awed. "I tried, it didn't work for me." She closed her eyes, listening to the small luminary.

"Sort of. All right, let's go. The sooner we get out of here, the better."

Ami cast a sidelong glance at the tiny sun. She looked like she wanted to examine this new phenomena, but she did not dare to let herself be distracted from her primary task: searching for an exit.

Ranma continued walking, Akane following her, carrying Ami on her back and glancing often at the magical sun.

Soon she had to glance in two directions: a second mini-sun rose from their left, and started climbing the sky dome. Then the third one, the fourth one... When six appeared in the sky, it became quite hot. A whitish haze covered the green sky, making the sterile white light soft and even, but no less searing. It all transpired amidst the same silence. There was no movement in the still air. There was only the sound of grass crunching under their feet from time to time. In the daylight it turned to have an unpleasant purplish-brown color.

The sectors of death grew rare and far between but did not disappear completely, forcing the girls to be careful. To Ranma's annoyance, she failed to identify even a single source of deadly danger visually, however she was straining her sight. They had to rely on the radar, being wholly dependent on it. The treacherous haze limited the visibility to a couple hundred meters at best, they were traveling like they were surrounded with dense fog.

One more hour passed. The tiny suns crept close to the zenith. Ranma wasn't feeling well. The fact that she was wearing a torn undershirt, having lost her red silk shirt, wasn't helping any. Sweat was rolling off her exposed back and shoulders in large drops. It wasn't easier for Akane, but she didn't have to worry about dehydration for now. Ami was holding staunchly, surreptitiously wiping sweat from her face, and thanking all gods for the white lab coat that was proving priceless now.

"Any changes?" Ranma croaked out, her throat dry.

"Well," Akane glanced at the screen. "There are no more zones of death."

"And the sector has widened to almost one hundred eighty degrees," Ami added.

Ranma perked up: "One eighty? This means we'll walk out onto a road of sorts. For sure!"

"Why do you think so?" Akane was surprised.

"Well, I thought: if there's no difference where to go, and the sector keeps growing, it means we'll find a road, then walk down it, and get where we need to be," Ranma croaked out. "That's why direction is unimportant. No matter where we'll come out, we'll get where it leads."

"Well, I don't know..." Akane drawled with doubt.

At this moment, they noticed some glint through the uniform haze ahead. Approaching cautiously, they saw a single-track railroad.

"What have I told you?" Ranma croaked smugly as she increased her pace involuntarily. "Too bad this radar of yours doesn't tell which way is the shortest."

At closer inspection, the railroad turned to be quite peculiar. The rails were more like thin double-tee beams, their sides further lightened by rows of round holes. They were made from a shiny yellow metal reminiscent of gold. Ami frowned in confusion, trying to determine what sort of alloy could look like that while having not a slightest trace of corrosion. Surely it coulnd't be real gold, could it? But the cross-ties were the most bizarre thing here. Or rather open-work metallic plates serving as cross-ties. Made from the same metal, they were resting directly on the rock-hard ground, with no subfoundation at all.

"To the right or to the left?" Ranma croaked as she kicked lightly at the closest rail in curiousity.

"A second." Ami was working the medallion, having jumped off of Akane's back. The other girl used this occasion to limber up. Which included several impressive leaps and a somersault. Ranma was watching her loved one with admiration, her tongue poking out, sandpapery like that of a parched camel. Suddenly, Akane jumped away from something as she let out a smal 'eep'.

"Whath is ith?" Ranma exclaimed, alarmed.

"There's a skeleton here," Akane reassured her. "It's from some sort of animal, I think."

Both walked up closer, to examine their find. It was hard to see what it was while it still lived: the bones were cracked, partly falling apart. There was no skull included.

"I phink it had more than phour legs," Ranma noted hoarsely as she moved the bones with her foot.

"I re-detected the zone of life," Ami distracted them from the zoological puzzle. "It now consists of two narrow sectors along the road."

"As I phought." Ranma sat down cross-legged. She was looking tired.

"What are you doing?" Akane asked, uncomprehending. "Don't we have to hurry?"

"Of course we donpht." Ranma cast a reproachful look at her. "Can wait phor a train anywhere."

"How can you know that?"

"Phere." Ranma pointed at the ends of the purplish-brown grass blades, cut and frazzled where they were leaning over the rails. "Phey use iph." She chewed, trying to spit, but failed. "And tphwo directions, not one."

"Maybe it means that we can go both ways to reach our destination?" Akane asked, clearly in doubt. She examined the rail meticulously but didn't find anything new. Her knowledge of railroads was nebulous, at best. The golden metal was equally shiny everywhere. She didn't want to make her husband go on, he looked bedraggled. And yet, the probability of the radar simply showing them two possible routes wasn't zero. This was bothering her, as was the very real possibility that trains run with week-long intervals here, and it will be their carcasses comatose from dehydration, that would finally meet one. "Ami-chan, what do you think?"

"Let's wait for the nightfall," the other girl suggested. "It would be easier to move at night, not as hot. Besides, we don't have to wait long. The day here is approximately three hours long."

"But we have to hurry," Akane objected, torn. Then she cast one look at Ranma, who looked like death warmed over, and gave up. "Fine. Let's wait."

Ami sat side to side with Ranma, throwing her lab coat over both their shoulders and pulling it up over their heads so that it formed something akin to a makeshift tent. Ranma just smiled tiredly in response: she didn't even have strength to feel awkward. The girl genius wasn't going to fret overt this either: possessing much less endurance than the two martial artists, she liked water and cold. It was hard for her in this stuffy oven, even if she didn't have to walk on heir own.

Akane looked at them, 'hmmph'ed, then said: "I'll go scout along the road."

Ranma just groaned in protest, her endurance faltering in the face of dehydration.

"I'll be keeping you in sight," Akane reassured her.

"I'll try to learn more," Ami said as she opened the second medallion again. "I haven't managed to find anything really useful yet."

An another hour passed. The air was hot and lifeless, not even a single fly was attracted by the smell of sweat.

Akane was walking back and forth along the road, patrolling their neighborhood while the searing heat of the light from the sky was testing her endurance. In the process, she discovered several skeletons as well as cracked horned shells, likely from some sort of humongous beetles. All these remains were concentrated close to the tracks. This signified something, since they haven't met any during their trip across the plain. But what exactly did it signify? Akane dared not risk straying far from the railroad, mindful of how narrow the sectors of life on the radar were.

Ami's research didn't bear fruit either. The world they found themselves in was an exception among the Ahs worlds. It had the highest magic factor, was known for the standard-issue control circuits becoming unstable in its confines, as well as vague hints of some epic cataclysm that resulted in the Sun being disintegrated and the planets flying in all directions like rocks from a sling. Judging by the fragmentary descriptions, the cataclysm also caused time flow to lose synchronization, the local time jumping several tens of thousand years forward relatively to the system time. Lacking true artificial intelligence, the user service mechanisms of Ahs dutifully reported of abnormalities, then went into emergency shutdown. The system had been waiting for manual intervention from a level one user for nearly two centuries — by the system time, not the local one. Either the level one users were that rare, or no one cared.

Ami let out a heavy sigh when instead of a geographic map she got a cheerful report about guidance beacons being not found, connection to the local database failing, and scanning on the fly being impossible due to intolerably high levels of 'corellativistic noise', whatever that meant. After long, arduous work, she found that they were somewhere amidst what should have been the Pacific ocean. Not reassuring, as it made one think about availability of water on this ruined Earth.

"Look what I found," Akane walked up to them, showing a big spent casing.

"Phah one serious caliber," Ranma rasped as she put her thumb inside. "Elephant ghun."

The butt end was even wider than the one where the bullet had been, making the thing slightly tapering.

Ami took the casing from her, and frowned twiddling the cylinder in her hand. It was smooth, shiny like golden mirror, unblemished. "I can't figure out which metal it could be. It's too light to be steel. I thought at first that they all are coated with titanium oxide..." She brought the casing close to her eyes. "But a coating would wear and break in some places. No, here are the scratches left from firing it. It's the natural color of this metal. But then, what sort of metal is it?" She frowned as she weighed the casing in her hand. "It's very light, while its corrosion resistance is incredible. A titanium alloy...?" She held the casing out for Akane. "Please try to squash it, and try to tell how hard it is compared to steel."

Akane took the truncated cone cylinder and squeezed it between her two fingers. She frowned, increasing pressure. Then she grabbed it handier, tensing with exertion. The casing finally collapsed.

"It feels even harder than steel." She handed the crushed casing back to Ami.

"That's ridiculous," the girl genius mumbled, looking at the crushed casing as if it was mocking her. "There are no such metals." She sighed, replacing the specimen in her lab coat pocket. She was intent to solve this mystery as soon as there was a decent lab available.

The medallion emitted an annoying beep.

"What is it?" Akane grew wary.

"The loop is not closed!" Ami grabbed the medallion serving as a 'radar' out of her pocket. "One of the acceptable directions just disappeared!" she exclaimed with rising alarm.

Ranma jumped up to her feet so sharply as if she wasn't slumped a moment ago, half-dead from thirst. "Khhet's go!" She stumbled.

"Carry her!" Ami shouted, already running. "I can hold on my own for a while!" she added while trying to get her hands through the lab coat sleeves.

Ranma tried to resist, but Akane simply scooped her up, catching up to Ami in two leaps. As soon as they started moving, the medallion stopped beeping.

"I'm an idiot!" Ami was berating herself, trying to reprogram the medallion on the run.

"What? What's wrong?" asked Akane.

"The line tells us that moving in that direction is acceptable. Moving with our average speed." Ami slowed down to a walk. "There's yet another check, the one that was there from the start. For the loop state in case of continuing our current course of actions." She was breathing hard, wiping sweat from her face. Running in this heat taxed her. "When we were sitting in place, this check was only confirming that nothing will sneak in on us by itself. In fact, there were only three points along the road checked, with dead zones in between!" While telling this, she continued abusing the keyboard. "So some thing came out to the road in one of these dead zones. But the alarm was set so that it worked only when our stationary position was threatened..." She stopped walking, her eyes locked at the screen. "One of two possible retreat routes was cut, but we didn't even notice it until we were in danger by just sitting there."

"So it could have cut both?" Akane was horrified. "And we wouldn't know until it was too late?"

"Phon'ph say nonsense." Ranma started squirming, and Akane had to put her down.

"No," Ami replied. "If both were threatened to be cut, the alarm would activate, warning us that sitting in one place leads to our doom. I think, the hyper-loop is a guiding line through space-time that connects our current position with our future position at reaching the goal. While it is closed, at least one survivable path exists."

"Khh we walkh iph," Ranma added as she waved off pridefully any attempts to help her keep upright. "Hkh..." She had a coughing fit, pointing along the railway back in the direction they were walking from.

"It sounds like cracking?" Akane was listening intently, shielding her eyes with her palm. The six little suns sinking towards the blurry horizon were turning into six blurry glares. "Was that shooting?"

"That direction is acceptable again," Ami proclaimed looking at the screen. "Did the menace retreat?"

"Okh it waph ekhterminahed," Ranma corrected her. "With elekhant gunph."

The girls stepped away from the railway, straining their sight to look into the treacherous haze. A rising noise started reaching them. The rails were emitting a quiet hum. Invisible in the blinding glare of six sunset fires, a train was coming.

(シーンブレイク)

March 2007 — June 16, 2011. Translated December 4, 2012.

 **Ding!** Tropes unlocked:  
Your Magic's No Good Here

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— Crystal  
— ruumon  
— LawOhki  
— Sunshine Temple  
— Orphus users (14 bugs so far)


	20. Mutual Benefits

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled**

 **Chapter 20,  
Mutual Benefits  
**

The armored train appeared from the haze suddenly, like a materializing phantom. Sharp highlights playing on the untarnished gold of its angular bulk criss-crossed with rivets, belching clouds of steam, it was approaching rapidly. In front, a massive forward plow was throwing off blinding glares from its worn and battered curves. Above it, a small-caliber autocannon with a massive shield was bristling with four barrels. Two people in white and gold armor akin to medieval full plate were rotating handwheels unhurriedly, turning it back to the forward-facing position after a job well done.

After the first platform bearing the plow and the cannon, large blades bristling along its edges, a massive steam locomotive followed. It looked like an armored strongbox with canted corners, a prominent rectangular cab on its front protruding forward and to the sides like the bridge of a ship. There was no smoke, no chimney, only steam puffing from between the solid, massive wheels and rods pumping busily. Armored shutters on the cab windows were raised, so the girls saw a surprised face fly by at close to forty kilometers per hour.

After the locomotive, there was a couple of rounded cisterns of the same golden metal, then yet another platform, this one with two gun turrets. It was adorned with the same rows of huge, sharp spikes as the leading one. The gunner knights were playing cards. They almost got a whiplash as they tried to get a good look at the girls. After that, a long line of boxy cargo cars followed, the doors closed tightly. The open-work thin-rimmed wheels were out of the picture against the utilitarian primitivism of the car bodies.

Ranma rasped, then touched Akane's sleeve while pointing at the rows ow spikes at the edges of the receding platform.

"I see," she replied. "It looks like it's against melee youma." She recalled the skeletons and shells along the railway. "Or against beasts."

"A strange mix," Ami muttered looking like she was thinking about something else.

At this moment, the train driver woke from his stupor. The air was filled with hissing of steam, brakes squealing, clutches clanking and the gunners cussing as they dropped their cards. Sparks flying from under the open-work wheels, the train began slowing. The row of box-like cars was moving by slower and slower. When the tail gun platform drew up with the girls, the train finally stopped.

"Hello!" Akane shouted addressing the two knights on the platform.

The men jumped up in surprise. One splashed coffee all over himself. He started shaking it off, cussing. The other one began explaining something insistently while making vigorous gestures towards the train head.

The medallion clicked. Then it beeped.

"The language is recognized as Khchyaahschyas," Akane read. "Attention! There is no predefined Japanese-to- Khchyaschas matrix. Please wait, matrix training in progress."

"Why you, useless bugger!"

A heavy door opened in the side of the locomotive bridge. Someone leaned out and started shouting something at them. The girls took it as him urging them to hurry, so they ran towards the locomotive.

Driven by a subconscious urge to be the first one to meet a possible threat, Ranma jumped into the oval door opened at man's height level, bypassing the ladder. She only created an awkward situation as her face met the train driver's chest: he wasn't quick enough to step back. Akane shook her head, then jumped carefully, landing in the door frame. Only Ami was climbing like a mere mortal, huffing at clutching at each step until Akane grabbed her hand and pulled her up sharply into the refreshingly cold cab.

The train driver turned out to be a tanned man in his thirties, with light hair. His athletic body, stylish boots and jeans with a checkered shirt were making him look like a typical cliched cowboy from a western. The only things lacking were a hat and a revolver. He nodded to Akane silently, then reached out and slammed the door shut turning a handwheel to lock it. Without saying a word, he returned to his place at the left front window and spun a larger wheel on the front wall. There was a hiss from below and the train jerked into motion with a clang.

The girls took a look around. The small cab became crowded with their presence. There was a fireman sitting in a comfortable chair at the back wall moving his hands over a faceted crystal that was glowing dull red like a jewel the size of a dish. The crystal was framed by a massive ring of metal with regularly placed rivets. Other than that, the cab was virtually empty. There were a couple large round gauges, a couple levers and a wheel at the front, as well as couples of rifles and revolvers in holds under the ceiling. The walls were bare, with rows of rivets.

But Ranma didn't care about these details. The air here was fresh! Despite the hot air rushing into the opened front windows, the cab was remaining cool. It was much easier to breathe here. There was only one thing separating this place from a real paradise.

"Aghh, ekhh, khh," rasped the pigtailed girl failing her attempt of asking for water. The fireman — an unremarkable middle-aged man clad in what resembled a jogging suit — gave her a pitying look, then returned to his work.

The driver asked something, keeping his eyes firmly on the road. To Akane's relief, the medallion translated without a slightest delay:

"As I understand, you are the only survivors?"

"Excuse me?" Akane replied, confused.

The medallion translated her words quickly as well.

"From the bottom hemisphere too," the fireman said keeping his focus on the crystal. "How did you end in our neighborhood?"

"We are not from a hemisphere," Akane corrected. "We are from another world."

"Stop inventing!" The driver didn't believe her. "There is nothing living on the planes but monsters. Not to mention that portal there could only be opened from a serious lab. The eggheads need a device the size of a house for that."

The fireman snorted in response to that, but didn't say anything.

"No, really!" objected Akane. "Don't you know that your world is a part of the Ahs network connected with transport nodes?"

"Every child knows about Ahs," the driver agreed keeping his eyes on the road. "But a network? That's something new. It's the first time I hear about these transport nodes."

"These are pyramids that make portals between worlds," Akane explained. "Much bigger than a house, more like skycrapers."

"This sort of devices," explained Ami, "allows one to travel both in the limits of the world and move into parallel universes that have closely matching coordinates in the network. Their main disadvantage is unidirectionality. You can move from the transport node to an arbitrary point. You can travel from that same point back to the node, but to travel from an arbitrary point to the node you have to be a high level Ahs user. There is always only one node per planet."

"So it's how we got here," Akane continued. "But it turns out that your world has no transport node."

"And how many of you were there?" the driver inquired with compassion.

"What do you mean?" Akane replied, confused. "Why do you think there was someone else?"

"Isn't it obvious?" the fireman said over his shoulder. "The creatures of.." The medallion paused for a moment, ".. _noxland_ ·don't have a habit of letting their prey go. Or would you say it's your own blood?"

Akane involuntarily straightened her lopsidedly cut jacket. It was stained with dried blood. The camou pants were literally soaked in it, now rigid and uncomfortable. The short-haired girl glanced at Ranma. The pigtailed girl's torn undershirt was all brown from the dried blood in the front. It was even visible on her black pants — an extra reminder of carrying a half of Akane.

"It's.. It's mine," Akane replied very quietly as she pulled the bottom of her jacket up to display a lopsided scar across her waist. "Just a little while ago I... I cut myself in half with a portal. Were it not for our traveling companion..." She shuddered.

Ami gasped quietly as she saw this merciless proof for the first time. In her mind, "resurrection" should have meant a complete restoration, without any traces of damage left. She made a reminder to check if Akane's body was all right.

"And you had a resurrecting construct on you, just like that?" The driver didn't believe them.

"Not we. Our traveling companion," Akane replied, still quiet.

"Khh, Khhrya gghh," Ranma injected in an approving tone.

"But still, he was an unusual creature," Ami noted. "A pink rabbit with front arms of a mantis... It's even psychedelic."

"What, a _creep_?" The driver asked disbelievingly. "And he helped you? They all are hopelessly nuts!"

"Well, I don't know what a _creep_ ·is," Akane said. "But he was nuts, all right. At times he was _too_ ·friendly... But I am grateful to him none the less. He gave me my life back." She shuddered again.

"Great and marvelous are thy works, Ahs." The fireman shook his head.

"I think he is a deeply unhappy person," Ami added. "And lonely. He tries his best to make friends with someone, but..."

"Yes," Akane agreed. "With his attitude any friends would run away instantly." She sighed wistfully, then decided to change the topic: "What sorts of creatures live in your wasteland? We walked for three hours but did not see anything alive." She shivered from the memories. "There were zones of death on the radar, packed densely. I didn't think we'd make it through. But this thing only tells 'don't go there, you won't return', not explaining why."

"What sort of radar is that?" the driver asked, surprised. "Name's Lahrt, by the way."

"Ah... I'm sorry." She bowed. "Tendou Akane."

"Scarlet Skywalker," the medallion translated clearly.

"What?" she stared at the hellish contraption, dumbfounded.

"It's a mistake," Ami explained hurriedly. "The mechanism translated her name to English by some reason. Her name is," she made a pause letting the medallion finish translation, then added, looking thoroughly to the side: "Tendo Akane. Te-n-do A-ka-ne." She looked at the driver again. "My name is..." an another look to the side, "Mizuno Ami... Glad to meet you."

"Oh, I see!" Akane exclaimed. "And this here," she pointed with her hand, "Ranma. Ra-n-ma... My husband. He isn't always a girl, but now he is unable to turn back." The mentioned one was hanging out of the right side window, watching the same flat and mind-numbingly monotone wasteland fly by. Akane made a resounding sideways slap at Ranma's derriere making the gray-haired girl pull back in with a hoarse howl of outrage.

Lahrt cast a glance at her. "Transgender? A polymorph or a curse?"

"A curse. But it's locked now," Akane explained briefly.

"And there are such things as non-locked curses?" Lahrt was doubtful again.

"When it is not locked," Akane explained, "he turns into a woman each time he is splashed with water. Hot water turns him back."

"Great and marvelous are thy works, Ahs," repeated the fireman.

Ranma interrupted them with insistent hissing, pointing at her opened mouth as she displayed something that in better times could pass for a tongue.

"My canteen ran empty," Lahrt replied apologetically. "There's only technical water for the steam engine in the cisterns." Ranma wilted. "Don't worry, in about two hours we will be in Kahs-Khasaeert—"

He wasn't able to finish. A proverbial light bulb lit above her head, almost visible with the naked eye. Jumping to the door, she spun the handwheel unlocking and flinging the door open in a single motion. With a powerful pull of her arms, she swung herself up to the roof. The driver and the fireman froze.

"HEY!" Akane barked as she leaned out of the open door towards the noise of the wheels and rapid flight of the ground. They were lucky there were no any poles along the track.

Ranma was sitting on top of the cistern fiddling with the hatch lock. A moment later she dove into the narrow throat, her arms stretched in front of her.

"You damn clown!" Akane breathed out tiredly as she pulled back into the cab.

"He fell?" Lahrt was already holding at the brake lever.

Akane replied with a venomous glare. "He'll return soon, unless he becomes so bloated from water he gets stuck in the cistern."

"Such a reckless guy," the fireman commented with disapproval. "Acting like this can error, invalid grammatical form, wheels grind."

"Ranma is heir to the Anything-goes school of martial art," Akane disagreed with pride for her husband. "A jump like this is easy for him."

"Oh! A chi-master of martial acrobatics," Lahrt replied with respect. "A very rare art, it's too impractical in our world. You can't fight with your bare hands in the field, about a third of the creatures kills with one touch. If not worse. One more third is deadly if they get closer than five meters." He was silent for a while. "But maybe you too, young lady..."

"Well, I rarely could beat Ranma in our sparring matches." Akane looked downcast. "He is very talented, and I must admit he trained much harder in his childhood. But don't mention this to him, or he'll burst from pride."

Lahrt cast a questioning glance at Ami.

"I... I mostly do science," she felt suddenly embarrassed.

"Yeah," Akane agreed with grim self-criticism. "Watching that us two halfwits don't kill ourselves by pressing the wrong button and the like."

The partly-closed door flew open. A sodden but very satisfied Ranma flopped down into the cab, her stomach bulging a bit. "Who'll burst? You think I don't know when to stop?"

"Please lock the door," the driver reminded her. "The _vyrm_ ·usually appears when you don't expect it."

" _Vyrm_?" Ranma asked while closing the door and turning the handwheel. "What's that?"

"The _vyrms_ ," the fireman chipped in, "is the main reason why trains need.." The medallion made a small pause, "..air defense platforms."

"They must be serious creatures," Ranma said as she glanced through a front window at the platform clanking ahead, the four-barrel small caliber autocannon at ready. It looked like the spent casing found by Akane was from this thing. The two gunners were watching the sky. There were binocular-like devices built into their helmets.

"Serious is not the word." Lahrt nodded. "The vyrm is at the top of the food chain in the known bestiary. It's three times the size of our steam locomotive. It levitates attacking from above, spitting fire or other elements — depends on which magic gave birth to it. Its armor is tough, you can't break through it quickly.

"Oh dear." Akane shivered as she realized how vulnerable they were without their Senshi magic. That thing was on par with a siege youma or even a dark general.

"But I wonder," Lahrt changed the topic. "How did you end in our world? As far as I know, there were no such events in the entire written history of mankind."

"Well, if we have to start from the beginning..." Akane began but stopped glancing at her companions.

"We are traveling to save our comrades," Ranma continued, careful to avoid unneeded details. "They got scattered around, so we are hurrying to save them. It happened that the shortest route across the worlds passes through your one."

"Yes," Akane added. "We need to... Need to find someone who knows about this machine, the Ahs, and could give it an appropriate command."

"Hah!" The fireman grew suddenly merry, slapping his thigh. "Here's the final point in the eternal argument of what is Ahs: a God or a machine!"

"Or a god from machine," Lahrt quipped while keeping his attention on the tracks. "Seriously. Do you think even they have full understanding or know all the details?"

"No," Ami agreed. "We don't know all that much. Unacceptably little, actually. We are traveling practically blind which makes our road that much more dangerous."

"Well," the fireman said with a sigh, "maybe the Ahs-Lords know. But they won't tell."

"By the way, about these Ahs-Lords." Ranma perked up. "Maybe you know something? Where do they come from?"

"Well," Lahrt said rubbing his chin, "once in two or three hundred years, the Great Machine chooses yet another user—"

"Or the Almighty chooses yet another prophet," injected the fireman.

"Something like that," agreed the driver. "In short, no one knows for sure. But there's a fact that sometimes there appears a person with a great power bestowed upon them, chained with many strange limitations. Then again, there are lots of tales but preciously little hard facts. For example, their powers have fixed ranks, from the weakest fifth one to the fabulously powerful third one. But the Ahs-Lords are so rare — there are probably two or three for the entire planet — that you can rarely meet someone who knew someone who met these... operators."

"Also known as holy champions bringing manna from heaven to people," the fireman injected. "And all accompanying high nonsense."

"Holy champions?" Ranma was livid. "That 'champion', that stinky freak, almost got us all— Gack!" Akane's elbow slammed unto her ribs with the force enough to crush concrete. But it was too late. Both the fireman and the driver stared at them bug-eyed. The latter even stopped watching the road.

"So you had met an Ahs-Lord personally?" Lahrt asked, dumbfounded.

"Unfortunately, yes,"Akane replied glaring daggers at her husband.

"The bastard," Ranma explained favoring her side, "came to our world wearing the form of a man-eating demon. It's a miracle we managed to defeat him."

"Defeat?" Lahrt relaxed, then suddenly remembered where he was and turned sharply to watch the road. "You are masterful tale tellers. Got me for a while... By the way what did you mean when you talked about a 'magma-cave evil'?"

"Hey!" Ranma retorted indignantly. "I did tell—" She was silenced by Akane manhandling her again.

"Magma-cave evil?" Ami repeated, listening to the translation intently. "Maybe the translation is not right? I'm sure he said 'man-eating demon'."

"Just like I heard, magma-cave evil," agreed Lahrt. "Wait. Looks like it's really acting up."

"But to defeat an Ahs-Lord?"the fireman drawled doubtfully. Then he turned to his crystal that was beginning to dim, and made several sharp hand motions. "No, I know that the probability of any event is never strictly equal to zero or one, but..."

"He was a moron," Ranma explained. "A bastard and a moron. And he had his quota already overdrafted, the machine was warning him aloud. So we... We just riled him up into wasting his last reserves into suppressing our magic and... other stupid things. And that was that. He was finished, punted out of the system. He was just slime. End of story."

"Ahs user level three Ahs-Ahstat-Taheet," Ami recited in a strangely detached voice, "was an inhuman scum."

"Great and marvelous are thy works, Ahs." The fireman shook his head in shock. "If it was like that... I can believe your story."

"Well," noted Lahrt, "there's no rule that Ahs-Lords should be intelligent and reasonable. Maybe they aren't, by design." He frowned. "But still, what treally was that 'magma-cave evil'? It doesn't sound right."

"It was a slimy monster the size of your locomotive," Ranma explained with disgust, "that was catching people to mock and abuse, then swallow them and digest." She made a grimace of disgust.

"At least it wasn't laying its eggs or larvae into them," Lahrt consoled her. The three girls in turn became green around the gills imagining how much worse it could have been. But he didn't notice, continuing: "I can understand this being pretty normal for the creatures of the noxland, while creeps could fall that low easily... But an Ahs-Lord?" He turned to the fireman. "This revelation makes me feel ill at ease. So a creep could become an Ahs-Lord?"

"Ahs forbid!" the other man mumbled. "So it turns out even if Ahs is God, then... It's like that legend about an overdemon that dreams our world. Or," he added with hope in his voice, "it was a fallen Ahs-Lord?"

"N.. normal?" squeaked Akane. She suddenly saw their march through darkness filled with doom in a new light. She barely held back the bile rising in her throat.

Ranma kept silent, but she shuddered. Multiple times.

"Ex..cuse me," Ami addressed the two men when she managed to quiet the bout of belated horror. "Could you, please, tell us more about this noxland...? We walked for several hours. Maybe we need a decontamination? Could we have gotten infected with something? Poisoned?"

"And what exactly is this noxlend of yours?" Ranma added looking out of the window at the dying sunset, not six blinding glares along the horizon anymore but an uneven stripe of fading glow. "How soon will this freakish wasteland end?" she added as the answer wasn't coming.

"Now I finally believe you are not from this world," said Lahrt.

"This, as you correctly pointed, wasteland populated by freaks," the fireman explained in greater detail, "will never end. Noxland takes some sixty percent of the planet. The rest are impassable mountain ranges and giant plateau rising beyond the limits of the breathable atmosphere. As far as I remember from the history course, the ancients called them continents."

"Man could only live in the oases," Lahrt finished for him, "where all the magic of life is concentrated. And the living water... I hope you haven't found any springs on your way?"

"Naw," Ranma assured him. "And even if we did, we wouldn't drink from one. This noxland of yours is saturated with some nasty magic, it's probably better to die from thirst."

"There's nothing to fear, then," Lahrt concluded with relief. "Being in noxland per se is hazardous only due to slow withering of both the body and magic. While you have living water and food you can walk it for weeks... If you don't get devoured, of course. That's a very big if. But those who gives up and drinks the water, or eats the root vegetables or the flesh of creatures..." He ended with an eloquent silence.

"They either mutate into creeps," the fireman finished for him, "or just die in agony, which is more probable." He turned to Ranma. "Take the hellbeet, for example. It looks and smells pretty edible. Even its taste is wonderful, according to testimonies of the now deceased tasters. And it is all filled with microscopic eggs of meat burrower. That don't die, I should add, even during roasting or strongest magical disinfection. Bite just a tiny bit, and you are done for. You are food for the larvae who will keep you alive with their magic, as usual, until they eat everything inside. To keep the meat fresh."

He kept telling them, for a long time. The girls found many educational details in his speech. Mainly, the description of the local fauna and flora that wasn't much tamer. Abridged, it all boiled down to a simple principle: If you are devoured it means you are extremely lucky. If you are devoured in some slow, flesh-dissolving manner, you are still lucky. If you are paralyzed and packed as food for larvae, that's what's called unlucky. You should have either avoided getting caught or shoot yourself in the head in time.

From the positive side, many creatures or their excreta served as valuable resources, the only source of elemental magic — like the magic of fire that powered the steam locomotive. These were obtained at industrial scales. But this obundance did have a negative side as well. The creatures weren't possessing the elemental magic for nothing, they could fire back with a spell of their own.

"...but the worst ones are those that spit acid," the fireman explained, glad for a chance to chat distracting from the monotony of his work. "It dissolves the protective film on the surface of aluminum, thus eating through thickest of armors in seconds."

"What aluminum has to do with armor?" Akane asked, surprised.

The fireman stared at her, turning from his crystal for a moment. "What do you think this all is made from?" He rapped at the golden-looking wall with the knuckle of his index finger. "The one and same."

"So this is aluminum?" Ami repeated in shock, looking dumbfounded which was quite unusual for her.

"But... Aluminum is silvery..." Akane said in confusion.

"And it's too soft a metal to make locomotives from it," added Ranma.

Akane cast a surprised glance at her.

"Aluminum spoons make for shitty throwing weapons, you should know this as a martial artist," Ranma replied her unsaid question.

It was Lahrt's turn to be surprised: "Soft...? Silvery...? What sort of nonsense is this? It looks like this translating mechanism of yours is malfunctioning again."

"You probably meant it's some kind of alloy?" Ami clarified with a hope in her voice.

"An alloy? Why, it's not," Lahrt replied, not understanding her. "It's pure, no one ever smelts it at purity less than ninety nine and six."

"It's not surprising," the fireman chimed in from his chair. "Aluminum is one of the most magically active metals. Its color and resistance are due to a crystalline film that forms on the surface of pure aluminum in contact with the elemental magic of air. While the metal's atomic lattice does have multiple resonances with the magic of earth, which had been proven multiple times. This is natural considering the abundance of this element in the planet's crust... I can accept that in a universe with different magic, its properties could be different. If we are talking about the same element, atomic number thirteen."

"Err..." Akane rubbed at the back of head sheepishly as she dried in vain to recall the periodic table.

"One and the same," Ami confirmed tiredly, looking like someone had yanked the ground from under her feet again.

After that, the talk gradually died down. The sunset glow faded, first coloring the sky greenish then finally dying. The sky darkening, the flat plain disappeared in darkness. Lahrt pulled one of the levers making the armored shutters on the windows drop. The visibility was limited to narrow slits cut through them. A powerful lamp lit somewhere above with a slight crackle. The night was narrowed down to a beam of light, with rails flyig from the darkness and sharp glares on the polished details of the gun turret swaying ahead. Akane sat down in a corner pulling her knees up her chin. She fell gradually asleep, lulled by the powerful rhythm of the steam engine and the rhythmic hammering of wheels. Ami tried to work with the medallion for a while, but soon gave up and joined her. Ranma was already snoring stretched on the floor.

(シーンブレイク)

Ranma jerked awake feeling some change in the rhythm. Were the wheels hammering slower? Lahrt was standing calmly in front of the wheel looking through the view slit intently. It looked like everything was all right. She jumped to her feet. This simplest action proved to be unexpectedly hard, like there was a half-ton weight pressing her down. Ranma froze in puzzlement trying to figure what was wrong with her. It felt like lack of sleep and leaden weakness. The lack of sleep she could understand, but the weakness? They were up and about for some twenty hours, no more. Well, most of that time they were tearing through jungle pushing themselves hard. But it was nothing. Why was she so beaten?

"What happened?" Akane asked waking from her light nap.

"I think we are slowing down," Ranma replied. She then realized that the translation was silent. She turned to look at the driver: "Are we arriving soon? Or did something happen?"

"Approaching Kahs-Khasaeert," Lahrt replied briefly. "You can check it out, the crater rim and the aura are in sight."

"The aura?" Ranma leaned against the slit in a front window shutter.

Straight ahead a huge dome of faint light was taking a large portion of the sky, barely visible through the air suffused with the light of the locomotive headlight. The blurry darkness of the horizon was rising up slowly obscuring both it and the rolling sky glows, hinting at a range of hills hidden in the haze. Poles with strange symbols began appearing to the sides of the track, some of them chewed up. Lahrt concentrated as he began slowing the train even more.

"What sort of crater were you talking about?" Ranma tried to ask for more.

"I'd like to chat, but it's the hardest stretch," Lahrt replied briefly. "Be so kind, don't distract me."

As if to give his words more weight, the gunners stopped dozing and unlocked their cannon's stops. Ranma grew wary as she stood there peering into the darkness outside. She was thinking that this noxland of theirs almost done him in. Simply because he was thirsty, not a drop of water since the previous morning. Then he wasted all his energy on that Shishi Hokou Dan, that's why he had no reserves to resist. She did of course drink enough water after that, but her strength drained by the wasteland did not return. A good rest was needed. Such a treacherous land. Not unlike an opponent who drains your ki by touch.

The train slowed almost to the speed of a walking man, then it followed a very smooth curve turning gradually to the left. The flat rise that hid the light of the oasis was at their right now, taking a significant fraction of the sky. The train continued crawling along it, then left curve changed into a right one. The slopes of a flat ditch began rising to the sides when Ranma felt a powerful magical presence that stank to her senses like a cesspool.

The gunners noticed it as well. Spinning the handwheels they turned their turret and soon the multi-barreled cannon roared with a short burst casting the ditch slopes into visibility with a blinding flash and making Ami wake up with a start. Some dark shadow, bigger than elephant, howled, dying, on the right slope. The crew of the platform in the middle of the train didn't miss their chance as well, the right turn freeing the line of fire for them.

"What was that disgusting thing?" Ranma asked.

"Some sort of undead," Lahrt replied briefly, keeping his eyes on the tracks. Then he remembered that his guests weren't locals and added: "They always mill around the oasis borders, in the inversion zone of the positive field. Well, as Kahs-Khasaeert is one of the biggest and most populated oases, the undead here are especially strong."

Ranma followed the bulk, almost invisible in the darkness, with her eyes. Its nauseating magic was dispersing with each moment. She felt thankful again that they had avoided all the zones of death on their way through this "noxland". Martial arts mastery is a fine thing, but fighting a monster possessing strong magic while not having magic of your own... She wasn't too keen of the idea.

"What happened?" the sleepy Ami asked with alarm as she glanced outside through the slit of a side window.

"It's nothing," Ranma reassured her. "The guys with the big gun took care of it."

The train, meanwhile, came out of the ditch in the hill to begin descending along the side of a huge bowl of a flat crater filled with fog. It was about a kilometer in diameter. The blurry haze had receded opening up a vista of a steep peak in the crater's center rising above a sea of fog filling the bowl. The peak was illuminated with windows of squat buildings and tall towers, built over almost completely. There were many bright white lights glowing through the fog like blurry stars, mostly concentrated ahead and to the right. The track was descending into the crater along the slight rightward curve of its slope. Soon the train was submerged in the fog. The girls gasped from a sudden feeling of freshness. It turned out, even the magical conditioning of the cab was only lessening the aggressive drought. Or was the air here, in the oasis, really special? Like someone squeezed life out of the endless expanses for it to triumph here with triple the strength.

"Now I understand what 'all the magic of life' means," Ranma noted as she breathed in deeply, happily. "I can feel my energy replenishing."

"You said you work with magic, in addition to melee combat?" Lahrt asked them with curiosity as he turned to face the girls. "But the magic of our universe is too alien for you?"

"It's not too alien," Akane explained absent-mindedly as she listened to the feeling of freshness. "It's not that bad here, magic rarely works in the worlds of Ahs. But there is no Solar system in your world. We get our powers from its planets." She humbly omitted the fact that her powers were coming from an asteroid barely three hundred kilometers across.

"Who could have thought..." Lahrt said, amazed. Then he returned his attention to the road. "All right, we are arriving. Don't hang out too much, or you'll have to deal with a curious crowd."

He opened the armored shutters with a clank. Then he took up a large loop of wire with a carved rod attached to it. Flinging the door open he leaned out. The girls didn't have time to be surprised as the loop was caught by someone who watched for it beside the track. The train hammered swaying on a lone track switch, then finally stopped among brick warehouses lit with the ubiquitous arc lamps. Freight handlers walked towards the cars.

Ranma was about to jump off the locomotive when Lahrt stopped her: "Wait, I'll bring a jacket." He climbed down the ladder to the platform.

"What for?" Ranma didn't get it.

"Well, I know that you are really a guy, but why give people a false hope?" He winked at her, then strode away to disappear behind a stack of metallic boxes.

"What hope?" Ranma still didn't get it.

Ami buried her face in her palms, feeling embarrassment for her friend.

"Ranma," Akane hissed insinuatingly as she grabbed her husband by the pigtail to drag her away from the door. "When was the last time you wore a bra?"

Ranma made an effort of looking down at herself. The thin undershirt torn in many places had plastered to her body after the 'watering'. The following drying on her body made it hug her curves leaving nothing to imagination. That's not counting the fact that it was barely holding, leaving her back virtually bare.

She glanced outside, at the crowd of busily working freight handlers, most of them healthy young men. She shuddered, gagging.

"Exactly," Akane injected lecturingly. "You could have figured this out on your own."

The fireman just shook his head mumbling something untranslated in the tone of "young people these days". Then he addressed Ami as he extinguished his crystal: "Wait for Lahrt. He's a right guy."

After that, he left the cab. They never learned his name.

"What do you think about this world?" asked Akane. "And more importantly, about these people?"

"I..." Ami halted. "I'm still feeling helpless. Too many things are different, we know still too little."

Ranma was looking out of the cab windows with curiosity while trying to stay hidden. There was little to see, though: a platform with loaders swarming busily on the left, a dark slope beyond it. A brightly lit brick wall on the right. Ahead there was yet another wall, this one with gate the track was disappearing in. The view behind was obscured by the train. She replied off-hand: "These people are all right. There aren't many of them but each one got guts. Normal guys, in short. You don't have to watch your back at each turn."

Akane turned to her, surprised: "Where did you get this from?"

"There is nothing in the database about them," Ami added. "Not surprising considering that tens of thousands years had passed here."

Ranma stopped her vain attempts to see around and turned to face her comrades: "Isn't it obvious? You can only live in the oases here, you know what sort of things inhabit the wasteland. They'd wolf a man down in a snap. The oases are rare considering for how long the train was going through the wasteland. And we boarded it half-way, too. The oases themselves are small. Lahrt had called this one one of the biggest but it's barely a kilometer across. You can estimate yourself, how many people this land could feed.

"Approximately from two hundred to two thousand," Ami replied absent-mindedly. "That's not counting probable use of magic in agriculture, but they should definitely use it. But the settlement, if judged by the light pattern, takes only a part of the crater. There couldn't be more than two or three thousands living there without it being horribly crowded..."

Akane felt her supposedly long crushed inferiority complex stirring. Ami, she could understand. The girl was smarter than anyone. But Ranma? She thought she knew him inside and out, they were through so much hand in hand. But still he kept surprising her.

"Yeah," Ranma agreed. "So little people live well, they did not die out, nor fell into decay. They even hunt the horrors from that noxland of theirs for firewood. Meaning they are all badass, with no exceptions... Why are you looking at me like that?"

"How, but how do you do this?" Akane was asking, envy evident in her voice.

Ranma was just blinking uncomprehendingly in return.

The train driver, who became if not a friend then a good pal for sure, returned in some fifteen minutes carrying two long jackets of dense, unremarkable gray fabric. The one Ranma got was obviously too big for her. Akane pulled off her camo jacket, donned the one Lahrt brought and buttoned it thoroughly. Then she looked at the old jacket in doubt: it was barely good for rags now.

"You can keep it." Lahrt waved her concerns aside. "We have no shortage of such clothing."

"All right. Thank you." Akane dropped the blood-stained remains into a nearest dumpster. The gray jacket was too big for her, but it was covering the top of her pants where most of blood was. "Where should we go now?"

"To the eggheads, I think," the train driver said with some doubt. "I know you are tired, but..."

"No, it's all right," Ami reassured him. "The sooner the better, we are pressed for time." She buttoned her rumpled lab coat up smoothing it as best as she could. In general, the three of them were now presentable enough to walk the streets.

Leaving the station full of busy freight handlers, they headed for the "egghead nest" as Lahrt called the establishment. He just left the locomotive, not even bothering to close the door. It wasn't just the locomotive, the gunners had already left their turrets too. This was telling about the local customs more eloquently than any words could. Even Ranma relaxed visibly.

The girls soon noticed the main peculiarity of the local architecture. There was no wood anywhere. The roofs, the doors, even the window frames of the stone and brick houses were glinting the familiar gold of aluminum in the harsh white light of street lamps. The houses were mostly two or three stories, compact like dollhouses. The narrow streets and the overall housing density were reminiscent of home, even if the architecture had a mostly western look to it. The top floors were often overhanging the street, sometimes even closing together turning the streets into real tunnels. The flat roofs without ledges and the lack of rain-pipes were yet another reminder that rain was a mythological term in this world.

Lahrt prudently chose a roundabout route along the edge of the town. Not hard considering that the town was barely three hundred meters across while their goal was the crater's central peak. But despite all precautions they managed to stumble on a noisy company of Lahrt's friends leaving an outskirts bar. The guy was drowned in congratulations and inquiries of where did he manage to find such exotic beauties. One of the said "exotic beauties" only tensed her jaw, the second one grew embarrassed, blushing nervously. The third one frantically closed her jacket she hadn't bothered to button till now and gave one of her most resounding "I'm a guy!". The medallion, such a jerk-ass, didn't bother translating.

They only managed to lose this overtly friendly company when they left the town entering a bridge crossing a narrow expanse of water surrounding the steep central peak where the "eggheads" were dwelling according to Lahrt's words. The bridge was golden-looking and open-worked as almost everything here.

The "nest" was looking very much like a castle. It had thick walls growing from the rock base, tall towers and narrow windows. Adding to the similarity, the end section of the bridge could obviously be raised. But there was no feeling of impregnability. Maybe because the wide open gate with its massive stone wings was leading to a brightly lit, unguarded corridor leading deep into the mountain, its scuffed walls painted pale green.

Lahrt led the girls through a door to the right. There was a banal receptionist's office beyond it, with a clerk behind a metallic desk busy shuffling papers.

"Oh! Long time no see!" The clerk perked up at the sight of Lahrt. "Decided to show your girlfriends our snake nest?"

Two of the "girlfriends" grit their teeth. This was growing old, fast.

"Nothing of the sorts!" Lahrt hurried to dissuade him, even before the translation finished. "You won't believe it, but they are aliens from another universe!"

"Is it so...?" The clerk stared at the girls. "Haven't you been had, old friend?"

"You can doubt all you want but they don't speak our language, only through a translating artifact. So they are from the bottom hemisphere as a minimum. Let specialists decide. For example, your lead planarist."

"Just like that. Well, we'd better call Baldy then."

"Baldy?" Lahrt scrunched his face up in displeasure. "But where's Kasaht?"

"He had to go to the field explorers team yet again." The clerk waved his arm as he lifted the receiver of a monumental telephone. "They had found something they can't make sense of without him. Kept calling them dumb-headed snails for half an hour straight, then boarded the second-morning train." The clerk dialed a number and began arguing under his breath with someone on the other end.

"That's a disaster..." Lahrt uttered looking lost. "That vulture would definitely play some dirty trick." He turned to the clerk interrupting him mid-speech. "Hey, listen, could you, for the sake of old friendship, also call the old mummy... Ouch!"

His speech was interrupted by a resounding hit at the back of his head followed with a rebuke from behind. The girls turned around to find themselves face to face with... In short, the old lady reminded the two martial artists of Cologne although she looked nothing like the amazon matriarch. Her lean, straight figure was almost as tall as Ranma, there was not a trace of slouch in her shoulders, and there were much less wrinkles. Her hair dyed bluish-cyan was put in a wide braid. She wore a stylish pants suit of a deep indigo colour. There was an elegant mage staff in her hand, with a crystal ball on its top... The new lump growing now on Lahrt's head was caused by a violent contact with that.

"Respect your elders, young man," the medallion added detecting the speaker at its owners' line on sight.

"Forgive me." The driver got embarrassed like a kid found with his hand in a cookie jar. "Honorable Khassahcht, I just thought phrase not finished."

"You can stop worrying, young man," the old lady interrupted him mid-word. She was practically exuding an aura of authority. "I will see it to that the esteemed Lukhyt does not.." The medallion paused. "..get carried away."

She dismissed Lahrt with a regal gesture. He decided making himself scarce was the best course of action, only wishing the girls good luck as he departed.

"Hello. We—" Akane began, suddenly shy.

"Let's go to Lukhyt's office first," Khassahcht interrupted her. "We can present ourselves there, to avoid unnecessary repeating."

"Um, all right," Akane agreed feeling even more awkward.

After a short walk down corridors and stairs during which they met an obvious youma busy brushing the carpet, the travelers found themselves in an office with a massive _wooden_ ·door and a monumental _wooden_ ·table. Considering everything seen so far, this was epitome of opulence.

Lukhyt rose from the table to greet them. A short, aged bald man, he would look similar to Rei's grandfather if not for a nasty gleam in his eye betraying unscrupulousness. He was dressed in a richly decorated robe, looking much like a classic cliched image of a mage.

"I see you decided to investigate this case as well?" he addressed Khassahcht with a poorly hidden displeasure. But what, pray tell, an Ahs specialist even as eminent as you would gain from an obvious case of planar displacement?"

"Esteemed Lukhyt, you have of course noticed that your so called 'case' bears traces of recent exposure to high-power Ahs constructs, haven't you?" the old sorceress parried coldly.

Lukhyt choked on his prepared rebuke. Then he resigned himself to the inevitable. "Very well, esteemed colleague. Let's perform this research together for the articulation is illegible and common good." He turned to face the girls seeping fake friendliness: "Lukhyt, deputy director of Kahs-Khasaeeert Center of Planaristics."

"Khassahcht, chairman of Ahs Research Society, professor of Ahs-constructing," the old lady offered in turn.

The girls exchanged glances.

Akane stepped forward. "Sailor Iris, soldier of Love and Justice, in service of Her Royal Highness Princess Serenity. On the official mission of saving the Princess." She stepped back signaling Ranma with her eyes: you are next.

Ranma cast a surprised look at her wife: why such formality? Then stepped forward to present herself: "Sailor Sol, soldier of Love and Justice, heir to the Anything-Goes school of martial arts," the gray-haired girl proclaimed proudly, then stepped back giving way to Ami.

"Sailor Mercury," she offered sheepishly. "Soldier of Love and Justice..."

The mages exchanged confused glances. One could only guess what did the medallion make from their speech, as there was nothing at all like their titles sounding in its translation, while their titles should be non-translateable, particularly the _sera..._ ·part.

"Let's sit down?" Lukhyt pointed at the chairs for visitors. The chairs looked hard and uncomfortable.

"Thank you, I'll pass" Khassahcht replied with cold politeness as she remained standing. Akane refused after her example. Lukhyt's mood soured a bit as he cast a glance at his luxurious chair.

"So, as I understand, you insist that you came from an another universe?" Khassahcht said encouraging them to continue.

The girls exchanged glances. Ami took the initiative: "Due to a catastrophic space folding our Princess had been transported into an unknown world. Learning from the Ahs-encyclopedia about the initiative of the Zeroth—"

"Ahs-encyclopedia?" Khassahcht's face remained impassive but her eyes flared with raw emotion. There was hope. Then there was an all-consuming desire for knowledge.

Ami would sympathize if she wasn't feeling like a rabbit in front of a snake. Swallowing nervously, she stammered: "Ye..yes, the medallion provides access to an encyclopedia. It's not very reliable as anyone could add to it, but it does have several millions of articles. We'll gladly share the information..."

The old sorceress' lips curved in a fleeting smile. Like a squirrel that just ate the canary, Ranma thought.

Lukhyt cast an inimical glance at his colleague, then urged to continue on a topic he was more interested in: "I am sure, the way you calculated our universe's coordinates in the Ahttst planar quasispace poses a much greater academic interest."

"We haven't developed nothing, we just followed that leading loop," Ranma snapped with irritation.

"She means the leading temporal hyperloop," Ami explained.

"A temporal hyperloop?" Lukhyt scrunched his face up in derision. "You are obviously not qualified enough to understand your tools. Such a construct is nothing more than a fancy theoretical abstraction!"

"Not qualified enough my ass!" Ranma retorted indignantly. "Using that loop she had built such a thing like a radar that let us avoid all monsters while walking three hours through the noxland. We avoided them all, never even saw any."

Lukhyt only snorted derisively.

"Detecting creatures beyond the auric event horizon?" Khassahcht was amazed. "This is considered even theoretically impossible."

"An auric event horizon?" Ami asked. "Is that translated right? I don't know what it is."

"You have probably noticed," Khassahcht began from afar, "that visibility in noxland is limited to approximately 480 meters, while our oasis has the diameter of 1200 but from the rim edge you can clearly see the opposing edge?"

"Well, yeah," Ranma confirmed when the translation finished.

"The reason for this," continued Khassahcht, "is following: In a magically dense environment... how to say it simpler... there is an entropic information decay that leads to impossibility of... certain kind of causal relationships between objects possessing an aura. The most obvious manifestations of this law is the kind of blurry haze that conceals all details. But more important, it makes detecting living creatures beyond this radius impossible. Not visually, not magically, not by smell nor even by sound or vibrations. For example, you can hear a train from two kilometers or more away, because it is non-living. But a more massive creature that makes ground tremble under its steps is utterly silent from just 495 meters. But you say you managed to detect them beyond this horizon?"

"Exactly," Ami admitted. "This uses a temporal principle. How would I otherwise program it to detect things I knew nothing about?"

"So it..." Lukhyt boggled. "It's true? This medallion of yours really allows one to work with a temporal loop?" He obviously dismissed most of what had been said.

"Yes, it does," Ranma snapped. "How else—"

"Not entirely correct," Ami interrupted her. "The tokens are responsible for generating the loop, the medallion only allows observing it."

But Lukhyt wasn't listening anymore. His face blooming with a grin of the class "Genma who found a wonderful chance to sell Ranma for a ten-yen coin", his hand was 'surreptitiously' reaching for a wand on the edge of his table, packed with some powerful magic. Ranma tensed...

BONK, sounded the unfortunate planarist's bald head at the close contact with Khassahcht's staff.

"And my esteemed colleague have, of course, noticed," the old sorceress continued as if nothing had happened, not even bothering to turn in his direction, "that the mentioned artifacts bear a personal signature of an Ahs-Lord level three _or higher_...? And had, of course, noticed that direct creation of temporal loops is considered impossible even for the hypothetical Ahs-Lords level _two_...? And that this so called medallion is a dead match for the descriptions of the personal interactors the Ahs-Lords use?"

At her words Lukhyt froze as if thunderstruck. His face was rapidly changing color towards bluish-white. He did know something about these Ahs-Lords that caused his heart to fall rapidly. His eyes turned towards the girls slowly, with a rusty creak. He stared at hem as one looks at a man-eating tiger after realizing suddenly it's not leashed. His bald head producing several large sweatdrops, Lukhyt swallowed loudly. "Ah..ahs-Lords?" he squeaked.

"We are not... It's not what you think!" Akane protested addressing Khassahcht.

"We got infected by accident," injected Ranma.

"We only have the seventh level," Ami added in a hurry. "Please take my word for it, our almost entire quota went into this interactor."

"Got infected by accident?" Khassahcht lifted a brow. "It turns more and more interesting."

Ranma then told her an abbreviated story of the fake demon. Then Ami took the floor telling about the tokens and the Zeroth one. During her story the bald shorty was feeling more and more unwell. It ended with him stumbling to his chair and collapsing into it.

"Hmmm..." Khassahcht touched her chin with a knuckle of her index finger. "Zeroth one, you say? Who scattered these tokens across different universes as a means of contacting him?"

"Well, there's only one of him," Ranma said. "While the worlds number more than a thousand. He was probably being swarmed with petitioners, so he grew tired of it. Very simple."

"This reason seems logical," the old lady stated. Then she turned to face Lukhyt. "Do you see it now, colleague?"

He just nodded with a hunted look.

Khassahcht bestowed a dry, calculating smile upon the girls: "You can rely on my complete support. The ability to study your case alone is worthy of any resources. If we don't have enough of something we'll contact the branches.

"Complete support?" Ranma asked with distrust as she cast a side glance at Lukhyt frozen in fear.

"I am still familiar with such concept as gratitude," the old lady replied with dignity as she glared at the short man disparagingly. "Especially when I am presented with unique, priceless information on a platter."

"It's the one about the properties of Ahs-Lords and the encyclopedia, isn't it?" Ami stated.

"Exactly. Many of my colleagues would gladly sell their souls for a single article from it." A warning flashed in her voice: be careful, it's like waving a gold ingot in a crowded street. "My proposal is this: you now leave one of your artifacts for me and my colleague in whose hands it will be _perfectly_ ·safe," Lukhyt nodded with a hunted look, "while you rest. Unfortunately, despite the solid theory no one had opened portals to other universes in the memory of the living generation. Thus, we have to figure where to start solving this task first. My colleague will do everything that in his power," Lukhyt nodded with a hunted look, "to resolve your problem. Knowing that he acts according the will of an Ahs-Lord level _zero_." Lukhyt started nodding while sweating profusely from fear. "I realize that it's not easy for you to agree to such terms, but time is resources as the proverb goes... I, for my part, will concentrate on searching for the token in this world and coordinating work with other schools." A grin blossomed on Khassahcht's face making her very similar to Ranma for an instant. "And I _will_ ·find that token or my nickname isn't Dire Witch of Ahs-constructing."

Ranma squinted. She didn't like the idea of breaking up. On the other hand, the medallions were useless without someone of the three of them to press the buttons. While the granny wasn't someone who would cut fingers off. Lukyt could. But while the old bat was around he'd be sitting quiet like a mouse.

"One of us is required in addition to the artifacts," Ranma added out loud. "Let me take this role."

The granny wouldn't play dirty with her part of the bargain. But stalling for time, on the other hand... She was wanting the information from the medallions greedily. Could she procrastinate if she can't copy everything fast enough?

"I would like to do this myself," Ami objected. "I joined the march just a few hours ago, I don't need rest yet... I think we'll research much faster if we join our efforts. You two go get a good rest. Oh, and one won't do, we'll need both the medallions for the research."

"Are you sure, Ami-chan?" Akane asked with worry. "You look tired."

"You two are needed fresh more than me," refused the other girl. "Go and rest, I will be working on the problem while I have strength left. After all, we only have to collect two and one is somewhere in this world... You'll carry me if necessary."

"But..." Akane tried to object.

Ranma wanted to stay and watch over the process. But he had to sort his priorities. She was holding upright only thanks to his willpower and the life-giving atmosphere of the oasis. It was his own fault. If not blowing almost all his vital energy on that idiotic Shishi Hokou Dan... He could only admit that because of his own infirmness and thoughtlessness he was all but out of the game. Watching over experienced mages in their own lair? Not even funny. But they had to get the token yet, then travel to the next world for the last one.

"Go," the quiet girl replied firmly as if she read Ranma's thoughts. "Get a rest, catch up on sleep. I won't allow sparing myself while our comrades' lives are in danger."

"Well?" Khassahcht asked them, her eyes harsh and piercing with a barely perceptible overtone of greed. "It's a deal?"

"Like we have a choice," grumbled Ranma. She then looked away from the locals to block the translation. "But tokens will stay with me, all five. This mind-screwy stuff works while one of us is holding them, we can afford not putting all eggs in one basket."

Akane reacted to this paranoia with unreadable look but did not say anything.

For some fleeting moment, Ami froze in indecision. They were betting too much. Then she suddenly opened the medallion to tap the keys rapidly. Stared at the screen, nodded, then said without a trace of doubt: "Yes, we agree."

"Good girl," Khassahcht approved. "I like to deal with reasonable people." The corners of her lips twitched up. "Who could have thought this device has a built-in lie detector?"

"I!" Ami blushed furiously. "I am sorry!" She bent in a deep bow barely avoiding headbutting the table.

"What for?" the old lady asked with irony. "You did the right thing, not trusting perfect strangers recklessly. All right, time doesn't wait." She turned to the two martial artists. "You will be escorted to an inn now. Any requests before the language barrier separates you from the rest of the world?" She unceremoniously shifted Lukhyt's phone towards her. The phone was the size of a good typewriter, decorated with precious gems. The owner didn't make a sound in protest.

"Language barrier?" Ranma asked dumbly. "What language barrier?"

"Your brain's shutting down?" Akane whispered worriedly, "both the medallions will be staying here with Ami." Then she continued in her normal voice: "No, thanks. If only... We'd like clothing and traveling supplies. We lost everything."

"All right." Khassahcht nodded. Then she continued into the receiver, in such a friendly-steely tone it made you feel sorry for the poor sap on the other end: "Hello? Boys, there is a pressing necessity to escort certain persons..."

(シーンブレイク)

The intern called up by Khassahcht led them to a small inn close to the center of the town. Its owner was an old lady Khassacht's age, just shorter and stockier. She relegated the guest to a young maid who appeared in haste after her call. That girl was feeling awkward not knowing how to act with someone who can't understand her speech. She led them to a spacious suite on the second floor with two beds and, as they soon found, a western-style bathroom. Spacious by the standards of the crowded Tokyo: it was only as big as the family room of the Tendou home. Ranma's father in law was living in a luxuriously spacious dwelling.

The maid said something to them in an apologetic tone, then bowed and left.

Ranma let out a jaw-wrenching, unladylike yawn. "I don't know about you but I'm going to hit the bed. We'd better catch some sleep while we can't change anything."

"Don't you want to wash first?"

"We'd have to do it in turn, then. There's a bathtub there, we can't fit in it together... Just look at this! There's a hot water tap, but no heater anywhere. How do they feed it by pipes without it getting cold?"

"They probably have one heater for the house. All right, you go first. I'll take a look around."

While Ranma was splashing and snorting in the tub like a watering hippo, the maid returned with two sets of clean clothing looking very similar to beige jogging suits. This sort, it seems, was used widely for its universality and one-size-fits-all property.

The maid meanwhile was blushing, embarrassed to show Akane how to use flat, tightly turning wheels built into the clasps of a bra. These controlled the size and shape of cups, band and straps length in quite wide a range thus making the magical underwear truly universal.

Akane glanced at the bathroom door. She smirked cattily. If Ranma thought to cop out, he's in for a biiig surprise.

(シーンブレイク)

The breakfast went surprisingly calmly. When the girls had walked downstairs there was no one in the hall except the maid from yesterday who was yawning widely behind the counter. There was also quiet clanking coming from the kitchen. Obviously the rumor about aliens hadn't had time to spread. Either that or no one believed in it.

The guests did not have time to worry about the language barrier. The maid woke to action wile still yawning. Having filled two plates with meat and vegetables — two very small plates in Ranma's opinion — she put these into a box built into the back wall. Closed the door, pulled a lever, then took the plates out already steaming. It looked like this world wasn't behind their native one in the level of comfort, despite the steam engines.

Ranma tried to ask for a bigger portion using hand gestures but was met with a firm denial. The girl behind the counter replied with a look as if Ranma was asking her to commit a sacrilege. They had to make do with the little they were presented with. Having carried their plates to a corner table they began eating. Ranma was picking at her meal with the fork reservedly, her face sour. Akane was acting with energy using both the fork and the knife although she was tasting everything cautiously for the first time.

"I wonder what sort of vegetable it is. A bit like daikon but different..." She made a pause to put another piece into her mouth. "But the meat is strange..." She lifted one of the thin slices of meat with her fork. Its shape resembled a sliced beef tongue. "I can't figure out if this is meat or fish. Or is it a prawn...?" She sent the piece into her mouth.

"Whm, wh..." Ranma swallowed. "Well, I had noticed yesterday that their dumpster is overflowing with snail shells. Big like this." She displayed it by holding her hands apart at the diameter of a soccer ball. "It seems to me, that's what this is." She lifted a slice of meat on her fork eying it critically. "Yeah, sure." She chomped the slice down.

"Mmmgf?" Akane choked, boggling.

"What's with you?" Ranma reacted with surprise. "Haven't had snails before?" She chomped on another slice of meat. "I can tell you the French guzzle them eagerly and ain't nobody died from it."

Akane swallowed with difficulty, then washed a coughing fit down with herbal tea.

"Couldn't you have warned me _before_ ·the breakfast?" She glared at her husband. "I'm not some French and I hadn't boarded with Shardins like someone else here." She cautiously plucked another slice with her fork to bite a piece of it so warily as if it could bite back. She chewed on it... "It's quite tasty, though. Especially when you realize that there are no snails this size, so this is not snail but a land prawn," Akane finished with confidence, violating zoology with extreme cynicism.

"Yeah right," Ranma replied cattily. "Such kinda prawns—"

"And Luna is a squirrel," Akane riposted masterfully, hitting her sore spot.

Ranma shut up hastily. He trained his wife too well for his own good.

After the breakfast they walked about the town for a while, not attracting any attention since they were dressed in the local "jogging suits". The scale of the town was modest, its buildings modestly sized as well. But it still felt very cozy. Everything was well kept, the streets of packed gravel had no potholes. There was no trash lying around even if some corners were dusty. In short, everything was in moderation. On the other hand, the streets were twisting, without any noticeable plan. The fog didn't feel dense from the inside, but still it limited visibility to about a hundred meters. Wandering about they determined that the town was stretching in an uneven sector from the central spire with its "castle" to the warehouses and train station at the crater rim. It had nothing like a downtown, instead it was quite uniform everywhere.

There was a road circling the town. It was in fact a winding street just like others, but its outer side was framed with a low fence of golden bars beyond which gardens and fields were threatening to burst with lush, moist greenery. Ranma and Akane delved into the labyrinth of narrow paths squeezed between walls of green. It was easy to breathe here. They were relaxing for the first time since the beginning of their epopoeia. Ubiquitous sprinklers dispersing fine mist made Ranma glad for the first time that her curse was locked.

The girls had been planning to circle the crater and return to the inn in half an hour, but it gradually became clear that the roads to gardens and farms were diverging from the town like branches. No one had thought of making a circular route. Adding to that, the fog was making navigation difficult: not only were the roads like narrow, winding tunnels in greenery but you couldn't see farther than a few tens of meters even if these ran in a straight line.

The sky wasn't visible too, there was only a uniform glowing haze. There was not even a hint of the mini-suns, even thought these should have been visible like glares through the fog. Driven by curiosity, Ranma tried to detect them with her magical vision, but she found that the fog was blurring that as well.

Some twenty minutes later, they hit yet another dead end and her patience ran out. Instead of returning to the last fork to try an another path, Ranma decided to cut straight. It was easy to proclaim such a thing, but when one's conscience prohibits from trampling garden beds, there's only one option remaining. Making a showy jump ten meters straight up, she spotted a suitable landing spot to disappear beyond trees with her next leap. Akane followed her hastily thinking that the other girl jumped onto an adjacent road. But found, to her disgust, that Ranma was showing off standing on top of a long pole sticking in the middle of a field overgrown with greenery. There were no other poles.

Cursing herself for buying into her husband's trick, Akane slammed into the garden beds plowing a furrow in the loose earth. Luckily, she managed to keep upright, otherwise her dignity would've been dragged through mud. She straightened up and looked around. The field was planted with something akin to enormous cabbage-heads, the leafy bulks reaching her shoulders. A few meters away, there was a fence glinting like gold. An atypical for the local farms, several meters high chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Akane glanced around nervously. Had she landed in a kennel for tigers or whatever sort of carnivores they have here?

The overgrown cabbage-heads were silent, the only sound around was Ranma's snorting as the pigtailed girl was choking with laughter on her pole. So insufferable! She wished he'd fall from there.

Akane was sizing it up trying to decide on where to jump to leave this strange field quick. She couldn't jump onto the fence, by obvious reasons. Suddenly, she felt something cold and tacky touching her neck. She froze. The mysterious tentacle reached higher, burrowing into her hair. Akane tensed pulling her hand back surreptitiously. Then she threw her unknown assailant over her shoulder with a sharp shout, slamming them into the ground.

Well, she had been planning to do that. Against her expectations, the aggressor had practically no mass, so her throw came out too forceful. Akane lost her balance barely managing to keep upright. The hapless snail disappeared in the sky flashing like a star.

Ranma was guffawing out loud now, shaking on her pole and holding at her sides. Akane looked around again, only now noticing the tell-tale spiral shells the size of a soccer ball lying on the ground under the cabbage-heads and holding onto the leaves in places. It was clear now why there was a razor wire. Otherwise they'd creep out and nibble on all the gardens around. Akane glanced at her husband with irritation wishing that he'd... Aha, got what he deserved.

Losing her balance from laughing too hard, Ranma plopped down into the cabbage. Akane smirked. A familiar pigtailed figure rose from the sea of overgrown cabbage-heads, a huge snail plastered across her face. It was Akane's turn to be choking with laughter.

Cussing, Ranma tore the tacky cephalopod from her face and threw it over her shoulder. "I don't know about you, Akane, but I had enough snails for today," she grumbled wiping the slime with her sleeve.

Akane just started giggling louder.

"And your throw, it was amazing. So forceful... Were you planning to launch a bear? Poor little snaily."

"Why, you..."

After that they weren't having any problems with landing spots. The two martial artists zipped over the gardens on a pure instinct, Akane chasing Ranma to smack her good. Ranma was teasing and dodging, fooling around.

Then they found themselves on a steep incline of the crater rim, above the fog.

The girls froze in their tracks feeling the withering heat that had suddenly enveloped them. It wasn't the temperature, that stayed the same. The very air was desiccating, hostile to life. Both to their usual senses and their magical vision. The oasis blanketed with life-giving fog was barely visible below like a blurry mirage, only the central spire with its towers and the opposing rim were visible sharply. Akane lifted her eyes up to the sky that changed its color from vaguely white to the same vaguely white but oppressive and hostile. The mini-suns were there, crawling towards the zenith in an uneven ring.

Ranma reached the top in a few rapid leaps from one rock ledge to an another one. She stood there surveying the horizon from a big boulder. Akane climbed up to stand beside her.

The flat rocky slope was descending slowly, gradually merging with the flat of the wasteland. A golden thread of the railway was emerging from somewhere on the right, to arch back to the right, disappearing in the blurry haze that served as horizon here. There was no sharp line they were used to, the plane of the ground dissolving gradually into the blurry haze of sky. It wasn't so noticeable earlier when they had been looking at the wasteland from the ground level.

"No fence, no guard," Akane stated with surprise.

"Yeah," replied the gray-haired pigtailed girl. "None of the kind that we could see. There could be a barrier here that repels or vaporizes anyone trying to crawl through it. Or there could be snipers sitting there," She pointed at the peak crowned with spires and towers towering over the sea of fog filling the crater. "It's only half a kilometer from here. These could be robo-snipers. We shouldn't have barged here so carelessly." She jumped down from her boulder.

"I doubt that." Akane shivered glancing around nervously. "It should be set lo let humans through. We haven't met any fences nor warning signs. What if children sneak up here?"

"Children?" Ranma scratched the back of her head. "Well, they seem to be nice people. But that doesn't mean they can't be like Spartans: if a kid survives to adulthood, congratulations. If they don't, such is life. The living space is limited. Simply multiply our traditional values of, say, the Sengoku era, by ten."

"Ah." Akane was looking ill.

"But it's more likely," Ranma reassured hastily, "that the crawlies simply die in this life-giving fog. Bursting from overcharge with life force or—"

"Something is creeping in on us!" Akane's alarmed exclamation interrupted her. The short-haired girl was pointing to their left.

Ranma focused her attention there snappily. There was a... wrongness moving towards the girls. Like a jittering distortion in the air that was unpleasant to look at. It was as tall and wide as a man, nigh invisible... if not for a deep, unnaturally dark shadow it was casting on the ground under its base.

"We're leaving," Akane said sharply. The unknown thing was approaching no faster than a walking man, but they were feeling no desire to get acquainted with it. "We don't know what it is and from what distance it can be dangerous."

"Aw, yeeeech," Ranma replied as she directed her magical senses at the approaching spectre. "Wait a moment." She held her hands out forward to start gathering a ki charge, slowly and economically. "Judging by the mystical reek, it's some sort of local undead. I want to test..."

The something, meanwhile, accelerated in anticipation of a prey. Black dots became visible, swirling inside the shimmer like flies. The vile presence grew closer... and blurred. It was now feeling like approaching from everywhere at once. Neither the magical, nor the ki senses could tell its position anymore. And it was utterly silent. You could only detect it with your eyes. Akane made an involuntary step back shuddering at the thought of how effective this hunting tactic would have been at night. She had only noticed the blur because of its shadow!

"Mokou Takabisha!" Ranma finally released her ki charge. The bluish ball hit the distortion... to disappear whithout a sound, without a trace. For a second, the blurry thing was swelling, filling with black dots swirling madly. Then it burst with an ugly sound, splattering black slime and some quite material chunks that landed on the ground with splorches to start evaporating in black smoke.

"It works," Ranma stated with satisfaction as she backed away from this vileness. "At least there's some consolation... By the way, this proves the second version. No barrier, they really burst from life energy."

"Wonderful. But let's leave before something really invisible devours us."

But they hadn't had a chance to finish their descent from the steep rock wall. This time it was Ranma who noticed a bulk that started crawling over the rim far to the right from them. Making a correction for the distance the girls realized how immense it was. The size of a three or four story building.

"Is this an attack of giant monsters?" Ranma muttered staring intently. "How inopportunely."

The shape was elongated and roundish, its rough hide multicolored like a patch-work blanket. No other details were discernible.

"We have to save the town!" Akane exclaimed making to run towards the unknown hulk.

"Wait," Ranma held her back. "They must have their own saving specialists here, more qualified than us."

"Ami is there!" Akane wasn't giving up.

"In the most protected of places, inside a real fortress. On top of that, that drawbridge is light, it couldn't support a thing so huge. But you are right, we depend on the locals completely. We should work up positive points." She started running.

"You are such a cynic," Akane berated her catching up.

They descended into the crater below the edge of the fog, to avoid running into some invisible thing. The gardens with their separating fences were flush with the wall of rock but the ledges and terraces remained free providing an easy route for someone able to move in ten-meter leaps. They started going back up after they crossed the railroad. The rails were stretching in a shallow ditch cut into the crater rim. The saddle point, though, was significantly higher than the fog level, preventing it from leaking out. The girls ran up the flat slope of the artificial ditch. The multicolored patchwork hulk was looming ahead, crawling slowly up to the ridge top. As Ranma took a good look at it, she braked sharply, stopping dead in her tracks with a swear.

"What is it?" Akane stopped too, returning back to her. "What did you see there?"

"Gun barrels," Ranma explained with irritation. "To think I made such a fool of myself!"

Akane took a closer look... Then she saw these too, thin barrels sticking out of dark holes in the multi-colored bulk. So it was some sort of machine? The surface looked like a shell of some beast, full of scaly creases, thorn-like protrusions and other organic details.

Several men clad in baggy environment suits with airtight helmets emerged from the fog, unhurriedly rolling some sort of trolley. The girls interpreted this as the strange hulk being not hostile, so they walked closer to take a better look.

"Here are the treads," Ranma added when the bottom of the unfamiliar machine became visible. The bottom part of the hull consisted of a segmented skirt, now upraised. There were huge, massive treads visible, each as wide as a car. Two in the front, and, it seemed, two in the back: only the edge was visible. The machine crawled up the ridge top with a dull creak. The ground was flattened here, all covered with ribbed tracks of these giant treads. The machine began turning around. It turned out that the front and back pairs of treads were connecting to some sort of slewable bogies. There were no details visible, all one could see under the upraised "skirt" were the bottoms of titanic rollers and meter-thick tracks messing the hard ground up.

"What could it be," Ranma muttered, intrigued.

Turning along the ridge, the dirigible-sized hulk sagged with a heavy sigh that blasted clouds of steam and dust from under it. The segments of the skirt began lowering with hissing and creaking until they rested on the ground. On the side facing the crater, gun barrels were pulling in, the gun ports closing from inside.

"A turtle strategy," Ranma commented. "This thing is slow, so everything is bet on the thick armor. I wonder what sort of creatures lent their hides for it?"

Close up, it became apparent that the surface of the immense machine was made up from uneven patches, sometimes connected edge to edge, but often overlapping. The pattern of organic-looking creases and the shape of horn-like protrusions was different for each color, giving the impression that the armor was made up from hides of many different creatures.

Meanwhile, more people in environment suits emerged from the fog, dragging lengths of golden pipes on pulleys. A hatch opened in the side of the leviathan and short businesslike sounding phrases could be heard. The work began. Soon, a bunch of several pipelines was stretching from the machine into the fog, marked with large black characters at each joint.

The martial artists came closer. One of the workers noticed them and yelled at them making furious gestures towards the fog. The language barrier made explaining that they were not some local kids meaningless, so Ranma and Akane followed his advice and returned into the crater saturated with life. Loitering outside the safe zone without knowledge and training was really a bad idea.

"What if Ami has everything ready?" Akane hurried as her conscience awoke suddenly. "While we are fooling around here."

They ran to the inn. But it was quiet there. The maid behind the counter was sleeping in a sitting position. It wasn't easy to wake her up. Then they had to explain why they woke her without using words. Making sure that no, no one had sent for them, they decided to visit the "castle".

In the daylight it became apparent that the body of water surrounding the central peak was not a moat but a natural lake confined in a stone embankment. The water was incredibly clear sparkling from a smallest ripple.

"I don't think falling into it would be a good idea," Ranma noted as she leaned over the high, sturdy railing. She had to rise on her tiptoes for that. "Do you feel how strong the feeling of life is coming off of it? And there's not a blade of grass, not a tadpole in the water." The bottom was really bare, only clean rock. "If you plop into this water you'll burst from too much life energy like that thing back there. They won't even have time to fish you up."

Akane shivered. The lake looked so cool, so inviting, it was giving off such a wonderful air of freshness. It was disturbing to realize that too much of a good thing can kill you just as surely.

Inside the castle, they went straight to the receptionist office at the right. The clerk behind the counter was a different one, so they spend a long time trying to explain to him what they wanted. Had no one warned him about them? In the end, endless repeats of "Khassahcht" resulted in him calling up a youma he gave some sort of command. The creature looked like a plainly-dressed girl with violet skin lacking a mouth and a nose. To the magical senses it felt much weirder than it looked. Without looking at or talking to anyone it went out through the entrance. The clerk waved at the girls sharply to follow it and leave him alone at last.

They followed the youma who was heading down the wide tunnel leading deeper into the mountain. While they were following Khassahcht yesterday, it was through the receptionists office further to the right, along corridors and stairs.

The tunnel ended in a spacious hall with a huge elevator platform surrounded with four massive golden columns connected with a lattice of criss-crossing beams. The platform had no ceiling nor walls, only a chain-link fence two meters high. There were no cables either, but the inner sides of the columns turned out to be toothed.

Waiting until the girls entered the platform, the youma then went to a round knob looking much like a safe lock. She started turning it back and forth entering a combination. Ranma didn't like this: how would they break out if they had to? If the elevator goes down, he and Akane could simply leap up across the beams. But what if it goes up? The ceiling was far away, but even from here they could see that the shaft was closed with some sort of door.

The youma finished clicking the knob, the elevator began smoothly rising. Ranma wanted to cuss. Akane was staring curiously. No, not at the mechanisms but at the violet girl-shaped thing. What was so interesting there? Had they not seen enough lower youma? It was inert matter animated with magic, only pretending to be alive. Yes, these did have real emotions. A mind too, however small. Otherwise it was a banal mass of sand, or wood, or whatever it was made of, glamoured over with a transformation that was only limited by its creator's imagination. They could have fashioned it as a five-legged box with an elephant trunk, its nature would be the same. Or breathe the same pseudo-life into a vacuum cleaner. Ranma was content it wasn't made from a human, which was good enough for him. It was a simple pastiche of a human.

Using human bodies or souls as ingredients was the lowest thing he could imagine. That's why he despised Jadeite so much. Even Galaxia wasn't that bad, she simply tried to kill everything so people turning into grotesque monsters was simply a side effect of her not caring to finish the process. Unfortunately, as the initial team of Senshi told him, using human souls as a youma component was the common trend among the enemies. Utterly unforgivable. Queen Nehelenia had turned her own court into monsters. Dark Kingdom had been twisting souls of the departed and infusing them into artificial bodies, that's how they made their youma. Jadeite had simply continued the trend. Compared to that, the abominable creatures known as Witches Five were the epitome of nicety. Their daimohns were evil alien spirits infused into random objects. That's it, if you forget the fact that they had been basically going around tearing souls out of people, or the fact that they themselves had been former humans taken over with alien evil spirits, their original souls devoured.

The platform was already traveling up the dark shaft threatening to flatten its passengers against the approaching ceiling when the said ceiling parted with a groan, its halves sliding into the walls. These halves turned out to be one and a half meters thick! Ranma noticed metallic teeth on their edges that formed a continuation of the teeth on the columns when the doors retracted fully. The shaft had changed radically. In the bright white light of multiple floodlights its walls were bristling with... things, unfamiliar but ominous. Making you feel like being at gunpoint. The platform shook a little, then the creak of closing slabs reached from below. There was yet another ceiling approaching from above. It began opening no sooner than a thud told them that the first one had closed. This next ceiling was almost as thick as the shaft was wide, its edge forming a complex pattern of matching protrusions and recesses.

After this airlock, the platform accelerated smoothly. Rising in the dark shaft it moved a couple hundred meters up, passing several lit floors and shuddering on the edges of opened hatches similar to the first one. Then it slowed passing yet another airlock until it stopped in a huge hall looking like an artificial cave. The shaft was ending here, the support columns went no further than the floor. Both the fences, the one on the platform and the outer one, had retracted into the floor so the platform became a part of it. Even the column with the knob had retracted. The youma did not even twitch, it just kept standing there emotionlessly.

Ranma took a careful look around. The brightly lit cavern had a rounded but irregular shape. In places it was cluttered with some huge machines, in other places the solid stone floor was covered with spell circles and diagrams that were making her eyes water from looking at them. There was something ruined and blackened covered with a tarpaulin tossed over it carelessly, the floor around blackened with a starburst of soot.

"I think, we got into some sort of a lab," Ranma said sagely.

"It seems so. I think Ami is there." Akane pointed at something like a long metallic shed sticking to the wall of the cavern halfway up its height. Golden as everything here made of aluminum, it had rounded edges and several low windows with thick shutters, now lifted like awnings. There was an open-work golden stair leading to a door in the side.

They went there not in a straight line, as there were paths on the floor denoted with stripes of black and yellow. Only a fool wiould walk somewhere you can step into unfamiliar magic. When they were walking up the stairs, they heard a ruckus of agitated voices.

Barging in, the two martial artists froze as they found themselves in a scientific pandemonium.

The long hall was occupied with tables and consoles. In the center, the old lady of yesterday, who replaced her indigo paints suit with something gray and plain plus a lab coat, was arguing with the familiar bald shorty clad in an unbelievably pimped up robe of tasteless purple color that was shimmering like oiled silk. Both were sitting at a table and writing something on sheets of paper. The back wall of the hall was enveloped in unnaturally deep shadow, everything they wrote was emerging there as fiery lines. Ranma immediately felt ashamed of her former thoughts that solving integral equations was akin to twisting your mind. No, there was something much worse here. The entire wall was bristling with multi-tier formulas and an occasional graph. And all this _real_ ·esoteric was encroaching towards the corner, threatening to not fit.

The gray haired girl couldn't understand a word. The formulas consisted of unfamiliar symbols. But this was painfully similar to dueling. Khassahch and Lukhyt were attacking, parrying, searching for a hole in the opponent's defense, then attacked again. The assistants crowding around the table would make good seconds as they stood there silently watching the duel.

This all would look funny if not Ami sitting between the disputants like between a rock and a hard place, twisting her head sharply to the left and right and sometimes even trying to put a word in.

The two scientists went for yet another pass exchanging formulas like blows. The shadow reached the corner, paused there for a moment, then reached out for Ranma sticking to her like a stretchy spider-web.

"Hey!" The pigtailed girl started waving her arms when the glowing formulas plastered themselves across her face and chest, itching like crawling insects.

The magical "blackboard" stretched like a rubber sheet, then finally tore off of her without a trace. Wobbling in the air for a moment, it plastered itself to the door opened outside.

The disputants fell silent turning at the sound of her outburst.

"Oh it's you, guys! I'm so glad to see you!" Ami exclaimed massaging her temples. "Have you already rested?"

"We have," Akane replied as she approached her. "But you aren't looking that good. Do you have a headache? Maybe you should ask them for a pill?"

Lukhyt and Khassahcht exchanged venomously-polite phrases that went without translation because Ami wasn't looking at them. It seemed like they decided to make a break.

"I'm all right!" Ami reassured the martial artists a bit too hastily.

"We aren't late, are we?" Ranma asked cautiously. If it turns out they had stretched their rest delaying the mission for even half an hour, then what had they been pushing themselves so hard and risking their lives for?

"No, you aren't late at all," Ami reassured her while looking at the old scientist lady for the translation to work. "We can't yet even tell how long the research will take. Everything is held up by how to open a portal into the next world. Similar techniques exist, but these are aimed at penetrating into elemental pseudoplanes. For some reason the local science considers the existence of parallel universes impossible even though their theory does have all the required premises..." She rubbed the bridge of her nose. "It's so hard to think. But back to your question. I expected you to come here on your own when you are well rested. We have detected the coordinates of the token with a margin of error of only a hundred meters. To our luck, or because the scattering mechanism checks for reachability, it rests on claimed territory. Here, take this." She held the medallion out to Ranma even as it continued translating her words to the local language. "Take a train there, ask Ahta at the station. It's a girl that honored Khassahcht asked to help us."

"But what about you?" Akane asked with worry.

Ranma took the talking medallion without questions.

"Don't worry," Ami hastily reassured them. "The portal controller will be enough for my work here. I managed to... copy the translation function. Take it and go."

"Let's go." The gray-haired girl pulled Akane by her sleeve. "We must not distract them." Walking away, she lifted the medallion to the eye level and muttered under her breath: "How does she tell them apart? They look the same to me."

(シーンブレイク)

The station turned out to be an office attached to warehouses. The waiting area was a small room on the first floor. Unsurprising, considering the abysmal population. There was also little reason to travel as except the oases all land of this world was environment hostile to man.

The girls entered looking around. The room was empty, its walls were painted lettuce green. There were perforated golden benches along the walls (aluminum, in fact, but it was easier to perceive them as golden). There was a timetable on the wall opposite the entrance, written with something like charcoal pencil on a golden board. It had traces of wiping and correcting in places. There was also a coffee maker on a shelf in the corner. Ranma couldn't resist a freebie, soon the appliance gifted her with something hot and brown in a ribbed cup of golden foil. It tasted unlike anything familiar but was quite good. She drank it all while they were deciding what to do.

They went deeper into the office through a door in the side wall of the waiting room. The door was scuffed but golden, which proved yet again the status of wood as an impractically precious material, akin to ivory.

They have found a moustachoed middle-aged man working bent over a ledger. "Search for him at the loading dock, he is helping there," he replied their question about whereabouts of Ahta.

"Isn't Ahta a girl?" Akane asked, surprised: the translation of his answer to Japanese contained hints, although challengeable, of Ahta being male.

"Maiden is," the moustachoed one replied wearily as he waved them away.

"It's glitching," stated Ranma. "Let's go."

They walked out and headed to the train. There was only one track, the cars standing with their left side almost flush to the warehouses. There were doors for loading, now closed. Judging by the sounds, all activity was concentrated on the platform that was on the right side of the train if one looked along the direction of departure. Only its end was visible, cutting into the crater rim with a concrete retaining wall. The train was separated with a lowered folding bridge leading to that end of the platform. A front edge of the first car was visible to the right, an air defense platform with its two cannons to the left, now unmanned. Beyond it, a rounded end of the water cistern was glinting glossily.

The martial artists headed for the bridge.

"I wonder how would they put the locomotive in place?" Ranma said sounding surprised as she looked to the left. "Carrying it by air?"

Akane followed her eyes. There was a platform with two cannons, then two cisterns, then a gap, then a platform with one cannon and a cow-catcher. But of course, that train they had arrived on had been composed exactly... Akane blinked in confusion. A platform, a cistern, a cistern, a gap, a platform.

There was no locomotive.

Akane cast a glance along the track. It was definitely one-way, without any traces of branching. To the right, there was the train. To the left, there were no forks nor branches, the two of them had been running there not long ago. Further out there was only a single track leading into the wasteland, nothing else. The locomotive should be between the head platform and the cisterns. There was no locomotive there. Akane blinked again, realizing with irritation that she was going to develop a headache.

"Stop torturing yourself, we'll probably see it soon!" Ranma advised her. "I too want to know what the punchline is!"

Puzzled, they crossed the bridge to the platform. It became apparent there that the train was still being made up. Both the platform and the track continued deep into the warehouse. A man dressed in coveralls was rolling cars from in there one by one by using an open-work cross-breed of a handcar and a bicycle coged to a toothed middle rail. Two guys clad in coveralls were hauling golden boxes into the front car using trolleys. The boxes were all the same size, elongated, with their length matching the width of a car. The platform being flush with the car floors for the ease of loading. Two men in coveralls were taking the boxes inside the car, obviously putting them in place.

"Is Ahta here?！" Ranma shouted.

"I am!" one of the guys pulling trolleys called back. Blonde, of about eighteen years old, he was somewhat too slender, without noticeable muscles usual for the others. He was also shorter than them. None the less he was half a head taller than the girls. "So you two are the aliens the Awesome Old Hag has been searching a guide for? Well, I am at your service."

Towards the end of his speech the medallion switched pronouns to convey his speech as if he was female. Akane felt a pang of irritation.(note 1)

"Glad to meet you," Ranma greeted him diplomatically. "So where are we going and when can we get going?"

"Present," Ahta gestured at the train being loaded. It seemed that the medallion could be confused by short phrases somewhat easily. "Wait a little, we only have to load a passenger unit." He strode towards the office building.

The second guy grumbled something untranslated, then started dragging trolley for the two of them, moving much faster.

A couple minutes later Ahta returned: "We'll ride with cabbage in the car two." Seeing the girls looking at him with surprise he explained: "To avoid installing an extra environmental control unit. Nobody cares for the energy but it's heavy, avoid dragging it from the warehouse. Then installing is bothersome."

An interesting turn, Ranma thought. Would we be riding atop cabbage, then?"

Ahta, meanwhile, addressed the other guy asking him for something. Judging by the tone of the answer he was politely told to stuff it. He glanced around, then addressed the girls: "Would you help me roll the passenger unit in?"

"Of course," Akane replied immediately as soon as the translation finished.

They followed Ahta into the depth of the warehouse. The "passenger unit" turned out to be a box without a top with two benches inside facing each other. It did even have its own rollers for transporting it.

The problem lay in the thickness of its walls. Behind the benches these consisted of solid aluminum slabs several centimeters thick rising well above the backs. The only closed end had a thinner but still impressive wall. Aluminum could be a light metal but this thing was quite hefty.

Ranma and Akane rolled the unit without any difficulty, Ahta was only pointing them the way. It was designed to be pushed sideways into the wide door of a car. They had to unload several meshy boxes full of cabbage heads for it to fit in.

"Whoa, what amazing strength!" Ahta exclaimed when Ranma and Akane effortlessly dragged the unit in not waiting for freight handlers nor a special ramp for the gap between the car and the platform.

Then the box with benches inside was pushed to the back wall of the car. Ahta worked with locks fixing it in this position while the girls were loading the cabbage back.

Then their guide was dragged away by the other guy who couldn't handle hauling the boxes alone. The girls were left to themselves until the departure, watching train being made up and loaded. Ranma noticed an oddity at the very end of the platform where it joined the warehouse wall while departing from the cliff face a little, due to running at a small angle to it. There was a kind of a large roundish shallow recess in the retaining wall, with three gates in it and one in the brick wall of the warehouse in the very corner where it abutted the retaining wall. What was peculiar that the platform obscured these gates blocking their wings from even opening. Was it retractable, then?

The freight handlers shooing the girls away for getting in their way, the latter went to the second car they would be traveling in. Like the others it resembled a rectangular box with rib stiffeners running along it sides. Ranma was sure it was smaller than the ones they use on the railroads of her homeland, both narrower and much shorter, barely six meters long. Looking under the platform she saw that it only had four wheels. The edges were sharp, the roof was flat, not a trace of windows. The door was almost a third of the length, the slides on which it rolled aside were the only prominent features. In the center of the door there was a handwheel.

It only took about twenty minutes make the train up and fill it to the brim. Along the way, the freight handlers had to install yet another environmental control unit: they dragged in a lot more boxes with cabbage. They began to load it but found a passenger unit taking up a third of the car. There was much shouting and swearing. Finally they attached yet another car to the tail of the train to put all the extra cabbage in while Ahta was "volunteered" to install one of the bulky environmental controllers under its belly.

But finally the great mystery has been revealed demonstrating how much tricks they had to use here to save a little more of the precious land: first, the entire train, including the second air defense platform and the two cisterns, had been dragged back using a winch so that much of it disappeared inside the warehouse. Then, the platform proved to really be retractable. A sizable portion of it rose like a drawbridge obscuring further view and access to the warehouse. Ranma ran and leaned around it. There was a previously unnoticed switch and a big circular platform with a length of track on it. The formerly blocked gates were surrounding it in a semi-circle. One opened releasing the locomotive from a cavern that was dug into the slope. It crawled out to the circular platform which then slowly turned until its rails matched the other end of the switch. Creaking on the sharp turn and belching steam from under its wheels, the six-wheeled locomotive crawled out onto the main track in front of the train. Then it pulled backwards to reach the train. The men connected the coupling thoroughly connecting some thingamabobs. The couplings were complex things protected with armored casings.

Then the platform was lowered back and the train crawled forward to match the cargo cars with its length. Men in coveralls started heading along its length sliding the doors closed and checking them. Half a dozen of them attached the head platform to the locomotive pushing it by hand with a shout of the "hey ho!" kind.

"Embark move!" Ahta ran up to the girls, all mussed up and wiping sweat. "Is tacky! I had enough of this exhausting hauling."

And again the obnoxious medallion used a female pronoun.

The girls entered the car and sat on the bench opposite the entrance. There was space for six people, but no one else had joined them.

A lamp lit under the ceiling. The men slid the door shut with a clang. The sight of eight massive bars, driven by a handwheel outside, locking it dead caused Ranma to feel another bout of healthy paranoia. But Ahta relieved her apprehension as he pulled two handwheels from under a the bench attaching it to the door mechanisms.

"That's the last resort," he explained. "For when they chew their way through and come inside."

The girls replied with wary looks.

"A joke, a joke of humor!" he said backing off. "I see it already that you are hardy. Well, only people of that sort would travel between universes. But that is really a standard rule of conduct in extreme situations: the passengers shouldn't lean out to not pose an obstacle for the gunners. You are only allowed to open the door if staying in the car is life-threatening. Because, strictly speaking, if there are things outside that can make holes in the car then your chances of survival there are even lower." He sat down across the girls. "Let's get acquainted for real, then. I'm Ahta."

"Tendou Akane," she provided.

"Scarlet Skywalker," the medallion translated obligingly.

Akane tried to set it on fire with her glare. Then she repeated while looking thoroughly to the side: "Te-n-dou A-ka-ne."

"I see." Ahta nodded. "A technical imperfection. Umm, but who of you two is Tendou and who is Akane?"

"Huh?" Akane was taken aback. "Well, Tendou is my surname and Akane is the given name. Don't you have surnames?"

"Clan names?" It was Ahta's turn to be taken aback. "No, it is considered a sign of being... unenlightened. Only because the neanderthal tribes use them, while many people would go to any lengths just to be different from them. A big stupidity in my _enlightened_ ·opinion."

The pigtailed girl snorted. "Saotome Ranma." Only after offering her name did she turn towards him and cast a warning glare at the guy. "Just to avoid unnecessary questions, I am a guy. This—"

"So it's you!" Ata interrupted her, amazed. "Very, very glad to meet a fellow in misery!" He held a hand out. After a short pause Ranma cautiously shook it.

"So you volunteered especially to meet him?" Akane inquired suspiciously.

"How could I miss this chance! As soon as I heard about a guy with the same curse as me!" Ahta smiled disarmingly, but somewhat _wrong_ , as if he was making goo-goo eyes.

"Bugger, rumors are spreading after all," Ranma grumbled with displeasure. "On the other hand, Lahrt is not obliged to keep his mouth shut, and the town is tiny. Pfft, I'm yet again the circus camel."

Akane's eye twitched. This situation was suspiciously reminiscent of something.

"What I wanted to say," Ahta continued as he stood up in agitation to sit side to side with Ranma, to the left of her: the benches were exactly for three persons each, "is that I am really a girl. Age eight plus, a surveyor with service record of one and eight hundred—"

He had said more but Akane interrupted the droning translation:

"Wait a minute! Did it translate correct? Are you really eight years old?"

"What is 'years'?" Ahta replied in confusion. "This does feel like some sort of rubbish or outdated word. I am eight hundred and twenty three decades days old."

"Year is— Oh." Akane felt really sheepish. Of course. No solar system, nothing for Earth to orbit around, no seasons. "It's a unit of time, 365 days and one fourth. This makes you..." She paused dividing mentally, "22 years old."

"What a weird non-metric unit. So, anyways. As I was saying, seven decades ago I stepped into such a stupid curse, and now I am stuck in this," he gestured along his body, "unnatural form until a specific counterspell is developed. I'm slaving away everywhere I can to work my chance off. And here the Awesome Old Hag suddenly announces she needs volunteers. I barely managed to push past the competition! Because her connections are as awesome, including the ones with those who could develop such a counterspell but won't without greasing their hands because it's too resource intensive."

Seven decades? Akane thought. Right. He means seventy days, not years.

"Uhh, erm, I can relate," the gray-haired girl said finding herself between Akane and Ahta. Since the former was currently looking away she had to look practically in the eyes of the latter for the translation to work. "I, uh, am stuck for only three days now but I'm already ill at ease." She was beginning to feel a strange awkwardness. Why was she telling this to a stranger? Maybe because he had always been compassionate, rarely able to deny strangers in trouble. "It has been locked once before, a few months ago. It was really hard then. I'd been afraid it was forever."

"How could a curse be locked or unlocked?" Ahta asked in puzzlement as he turned to face her putting his arm along the back of the bench to sit more comfortably twisted like that.

"It was, uh, activated by pouring water on me," Ranma explained. "While hot water deactivated it." She was feeling a strange turmoil, fragments of some reflexes were twitching, unable to activate.

Akane frowned lifting one brow. Something was _definitely_ ·not right here. She made to to speak up, then closed her mouth. No, it couldn't be, she was being silly.

Ahta blinked in surprise: "Deactivated? Meaning you could have choosen the gender you wanted? How is that a curse then? It's metamorphing with unusual control conditions!"

"As if!" Ranma replied, relieved to switch to a familiar topic. "Water was everywhere, I was practically attracting it. If not the rain, it was a burst pipe. Or someone splashing something out. Things were even reaching such heights of lunacy as wandering gold fish merchants. Just imagine them getting an idea of peddling fishbowls! But they were always stumbling and sending their fishes right in my direction. Splash, and I am a girl at the worst possible moment. But hot water could find me at wrong moments too. If not someone uppending their tea on me, then a heater pipe bursts."

"It seems your world is full of neutral water. By the way, what is 'rain'? The word feels like a valid one from our language, but I'm unfamiliar with it.

"It's when water is pouring from the sky," Ranma said, feeling strange shivers from looking into his bluish-gray eyes for too long. It's a girl, she reminded herself self-accusigly, a cursed girl. Coughing awkwardly, she continued: "Clouds condensate and droplets fall down. Forget the umbrella home and you are all wet and with a fever. And, uh, what do you mean 'neutral'?"

"Neutral," Ahta explained shifting into a more comfortable sideways position with his left leg over his right one, "means relatively to dead-living. The water in the oases springs is living, usually in concentrations lethal for a human. The water in the rare springs of the wasteland is dead, extremely hazardous for a human. For drinking and bathing they neutralize the oasis water subjecting it to demagization... But why are we discussing boring technicals? Tell me about yourself."

"I am, uh, the heir to the Anything-goes Saotome school of martial arts. Eighteen years old, um... That makes me... six thousand and some seven hundred days old. I spent most of my life on the road, traveling with my father, learning secrets of the Art from various masters. Doing that I also got, uh, into this curse mess."

"Martial arts? Meaning close-range combat with melee weapons?"

"More often with my bare hands," Ranma corrected. "Weapons may be or may not be available while your body is always with you."

"Hm, a pure warrior, then. Against humans. Or are creatures killing with a touch so rare in your world?"

"There are no such things," Ranma replied swallowing a lump in her throat that appeared from this thought alone.

"Just like that... Truly an alien world. But how long do you have this... uncontrollable metamorphing? Because I refuse to consider it a curse until the point where it got locked."

"Ahem, erm, for a couple years or so," Ranma squeezed out feeling a confusing tightness in her chest. It's so hot in here, she thought, that environmental thingie of theirs is not working properly. "I fell into a cursed spring. It looked like a common pool of water."

"What a coincidence!" exclaimed Ahta. "I too got my curse by stepping into a error phrase unfinished. Well, you can call it a pool."

"Oh, I see..." Ranma honestly didn't know what to say after that.

"Ah, It's like I was six only yesterday," Ahta noted dreamily. "The youth, the first transports of love... I bet you have conquered many girls with the talents of your magnitude?"

"I, uhh," Ranma felt warm from a sudden onrush of memories. "Many were chasing me, but there is only one..."She cast a side glance at Akane but the other girl continued sitting there frowning and staring into the wall, clearly puzzled by something she just couldn't formulate.

Ahta was looking like he was listening to something far away.

"Have you ever tried swinging the other way?" he asked suddenly leaning closer. Ranma was starting to feel nervous from the closeness of this girl... guy... person. Unsettled by his point-blank stare — why was she reacting like that? — she almost missed the meaning of the question.

"Swing? You mean, as in a door? Maybe the translation is glitching?"

This moment clanking of coupling gear rolled along the train like a wave, and the car lurched into motion. Losing his balance, Ahta had to put his arm around Ranma's shoulders to avoid falling onto her.

"What I mean is, have you experienced love from both sides?" he continued so breathily that Ranma's pulse quickened and her face felt hot.

Ranma panicked as she realized what this perve... this girl was talking about. The defensive reflexes were twitching, disoriented. Guy girl! Punt not forgive!

"Have you ever been held in the arms of a pretty guy?" Ahta pressed his/her attack.

"I, uh, yes, no," Ranma squeaked remembering her first kiss. Mikado Sanjenin! Kunou! Yes, no, punt not!

Continuing holding the gray haired girl by her shoulders Ahta have surreptitiously put his other hand on her knee causing a pleasant tingle in her belly. Realizing _what_ ·her body wanted Ranma plummeted into abyss of ringing horror. She couldn't feel the position of her body anymore. Where was up, where was down? Her cheeks were burning. "I, uh, I never willingly," she was hearing her own voice from afar vaguely aware that she was babbling like a complete moe-blob.

"Get your paws off my husband!" Akane snarled like a tiger.

"What?" Ahta jumped to his feet and away from the panicking Ranma. "A _husband_? Already connected by the sacred bond of marriage at such a young age?" he exclaimed in shock.

Ranma slumped on the bench with a moan of relief, endlessly grateful to her wife.

Ahta collected himself, coughed, then said in a pointedly apologizing voice: "I am sorry." He bowed ostentatiously. "If the alien customs are so strange and marrying is common so early, or if the translation of your device is imprecise and you are but lovers, it doesn't matter. I shouldn't have... Ah, error phrase not finished again vexedly." He plopped down to the edge of the opposing bench.

An awkward pause followed. Ranma couldn't yet recover from shock. The sleazy, treacherous pest of a body! Why couldn't it understand that he _wasn't_ ·interested in guys. That they were making him ill, honest! The heartbeat was slowing bit by bit, but the heat of her cheeks was still sending chills down her spine. And the last vestiges of pleasant tingling in her belly were making her ill and her hair trying to stand on its ends. It was like years haven't passed since that horror on the skating ring when he had learned the hard way what a terrifying thing the female body is! He thought he learned to control this "dark side" of his nature, but now it looked like that was simply wishful thinking. As it turned out he had been holding up only thanks to punting the guys away faster than the _reaction_ ·came. Until the next guy turned out to be a girl that you cannot punt and gotcha. But he should admit, the bugger performed a masterful attack, first circumventing Ranma's defense by asking about girls and putting him in the right mood. Only then she attacked.

Awkward silence was stretching on.

Ranma was shifting on the bench thinking that he couldn't even be angry at this weirdo... Because in his mind Ahta was a girl, she should have been attracted to guys. But they felt sick of this. Ranma could relate and sympathize. It was natural that Ahta reached for the first person who could understand and... No! Shoo! Get away! Begone, thought! Feeling a harsh case of crawlies along her back, horrified by the fact that she started to give, even if it was in her mind alone, the gray-haired girl shifted away from Ahta. As a result she pressed tightly against Akane. Then she leaned against the other girl who felt so reliable. She was _family_.

Akane put an arm around the pigtailed girl's shoulders. She wasn't inclined to have small talk either, overflowing with unfriendliness after this guy's pass at her husband.

There was nothing to look at in a car without windows, if one disregarded the person invoking unpleasant thoughts and the silent cabbage. There was absolutely nothing to do, not counting counting cabbage heads. Not talking with Ahta, for sure. Calmed with the familiar warmth of her loved one Ranma gradually started dozing off. The train was moving slowly climbing towards the saddle in the crater rim. I'll catch a nap until we arrive, was Ranma's last thought.

(シーンブレイク)

March 2007 — June 24, 2011 — January 27, 2014. Translated January 27, 2014

 **Author's notes:**

 **1**  
Unlike English where "I" is genderless and "He/She" conveys gender, the vast majority of the third person pronouns in Japanese are genderless, as if they used "they" most of the time. The first person pronouns, on the other hand — at least the ones used in the anime — are more or less gender-charged, see Wikipedia. The version "I" used by vast majority of anime girls is "atashi" (Me, girly) — except Haruka who uses "boku" ("I, tomboy" when used by a girl, or polite "Me, boy" when used by a male). Girl-Ranma uses "ore" (I, macho) to reinforce her masculinity.

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— Crystal  
— ryuumon  
— Sunshine Temple  
— OSMQEP  
— Orphus users (9 bugs so far)  
— Sunshine Temple  
— LawOhki  
— Crystal  
— Orphus users (30 bugs so far)  
— ryuumon, who had checked _all_ ·chapters of my story single-handedly correcting **370** errors, blunders or just language so gnarled that, I quote, "good old Noah Webster, spinning in his grave, would start putting a ships engine to shame".  
— Sunshine Temple  
— LawOhki  
— Crystal  
— Orphus users (115 bugs so far)  
— Златовласка Зеленоглазая


	21. Industrial Dungeon Crawl

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled**

 **Chapter 21,  
Industrial Dungeon Crawl**

Unremarkable tunnels were stretching in all directions branching, merging, twisting sharply up and down. Like gray bowels.

"We can keep searching for it till the end of time," Ahta grumbled. "We have to split to comb this area thoroughly. Let me take the upper levels, Akane the middle and Ranma the lower ones. Just keep your eyes open. They had checked this area of course, but they always do this hastily, with a quick and dirty magical scan. Who knows what the creeps could have left lying around. So don't touch anything, all right? Don't come close, even." He handed the girls chunks of white rock to mark checked passages. Then he disappeared in a tunnel leading to the upper levels.

"I don't like this idea," Ranma grumbled with distaste. She was feeling some vague apprehension.

"All right, your suggestion then?" Akane made a pointed pause met with silence on Ranma's part. "Just as I thought. I don't like this too, you know. Don't worry." She stepped up to the gray-haired girl to hug her lightly. "I _will_ ·be careful."

Ranma wanted to object, badly. But she couldn't put the disjointed, vague impressions into words. So she decided to keep silent, lest she blurted out something _really_ ·stupid.

"All right, here we go." Akane turned around. Soon she disappeared beyond the nearest corridor turn, twin scraping sounds reaching from that direction as she marked her passage with an arrow.

Ranma sighed as she headed for a corridor that descended sharply leading to the lower levels. Down there there were the same bowels of empty corridors meandering and branching in convoluted ways. Ranma was feeling ill at ease being in there. She couldn't say herself, why. Maybe because such labyrinth would feel more at home in a nightmare, not in reality?

Marking yet another corridor as a dead end — it branched into two, one leading too far away from the search zone with the other diving deeper still — Ranma returned to the previous branch and drew yet another criss cross mark on the wall. Dead end, check.

She turned into a new corridor. The feeling of wrongness persisted, haunting her. Ranma stopped to try and figure it out. Something was wrong. There was something wrong with her. She couldn't put a finger on it, though. Was there some alien factor affecting her body? The thought of her reflexes failing her was disconcerting. Ranma knew from close an personal experience that there were worlds out there where ki did not work turning all her hard-earned skill into a useless — or worse, suicidal — heap of habits and knee-jerk reactions. But ki was working here, right? Closing her eyes she began a complex series of kata, modifying the deadly dance on the fly to incorporate the tunnel walls both usable for rebounding and as a weapon to slam opponent against. She finished by touching the wall with her index finger and opened her eyes. Her finger was touching the center of a dark spot she chose as the final target.

Her body was perfectly fine.

And still, something was wrong.

Ranma sighed, shook her head and moved on thinking that she'd have to take a rain check on these doubts. Ranma was loathe to do this. If there was something wrong with her... If they found it out in a battle, it would be too late. She'd overextend, or miscalculate her opponent's strength. Or fail to feel a danger in time... As Akane failed to... feel that pushing... that button...

Suddenly, the fragments of thoughts fell together with a sharp click. That's it! It was a vital part of the danger sense that wasn't working! Namely the sort of clairvoyance the most experienced martial artists develop that allows them to avoid a falling rock or other threats devoid of hostile ki and killing intent. Here, in Ahs, manipulating time was impossible. But what is clairvoyance if not cheating time? Which Ahs prevents with the iron fist of its rules. That was also why Solar Teleport wasn't working: it includes foreseeing the destination point as a part of the process!

Why didn't he recognize the existence of such a glaring hole right away? Ranma knew the answer. Too used to perceiving the danger sense as something solid, indivisible. He just couldn't wrap his mind around the idea that parts of his danger sense could work or fail separately.

There was one more thought that surfaced from the depth of the subconsciousness: that sharp click, it did sound in reality. From the floor. Lost in thoughts, she failed to notice a pressure plate.

Ranma wanted to cuss but her remaining lifespan proved to be too short for that: several pairs of ghostly blades erupted from the tunnel walls in bursts of pulverized rock, closing rapidly like giant scissors.

Ranma twitched to dodge, only to realize there was nowhere to. She was surrounded by blades, trapped in a rapidly collapsing rhombus of free space.

A SICKENING CRUNCH

It almost didn't hurt, she thought as she was plummeting into numbing blindness.

(シーンブレイク)

Deep silence reigning supreme, the world shrouded in fog. A placid river was flowing between shores of green grass.

Ranma twitched, her surroundings fading in like an instant photo. Where had she been just a moment ago? What...

She found herself kneeling, dressed in a formal kimono. Not what she'd prefer: it was fine clothing and all, but fighting in it would be... bothersome. She was sitting on the very edge of the shore facing the other side of the river. Beyond the flowing water — it was hard to tell how far, for some reason — there were two grannies. Both dressed like her in formal kimono, kneeling facing her.

Who could they be, thought Ranma. It's like I should know. No, wait. A feeling of cozy warm lap and a hand petting the newly born kitten floated up from some corner of her memory. It's that old lady who had been helping me out of the neko-ken, Ranma realized suddenly. She smiled at the old lady who was one of very few people that had left only nice memories of them.

The other granny was feeling... Unfamiliar, but at the same time like family. The old lady smiled at her warmly. "So that's how you grew up, my grandson. Pity we haven't been destined to meet." Her smile turned sad.

"You are too early to join us," the granny-from-neighborhood said with a frown. Could it be that your father, let's not speak of him, finally overstepped reason too far?"

"No, I..." Ranma began politely. "Aw, crappity crap!" she finished far more colorfully when she finally realized _what_ ·this place was and which river it was. "Wait, wait, wait, grannies. I kinda love you and stuff, but I have an unfinished task! I have to save Usagi, and Akane, and..." The words died on her tongue, empty and powerless. All of that did not matter anymore. Everything was in the past, carried away by the quiet waters. Make one step, and here's the other shore, and there is no return. There was nowhere to return anyway. No need to.

Ranma stood up. Quiet and detached, she stepped into the water.

A disgusting sound tore the silence apart. It was like thousands of electric motors whirring discordantly. The fog parted. A giant hand of a mechanical God reached out to grab Ranma roughly. Then it jerked her away, down... or up... perpendicularly to this ghostly reality. The shores of the river of the dead, the grandmother who didn't live to see him born, the granny-from-neighborhood — everything dissolved in a gray void. Ranma felt her senses deadening...

(シーンブレイク)

Yuck, I'm seeing weird things now, Ranma thought opening her eyes and trying to blink the bleary fogginess away. Had I breathed some fumes in? The idea seemed plausible, especially as her senses were severely dulled. Her eyes just couldn't focus on the gray stone in front of her face. The silence was far too deep for a cave, and she wasn't feeling her tongue. Not just tongue, she realized with sudden horror. Her entire body too! Judging by what her eyes were telling her, she was face down on the floor, but she couldn't feel anything. There should be at least feeling of stone under her left cheek, and some pain too, as there was blood pooling from her busted nose.

Am I paralyzed? Ranma thought with a chill. I'm feeling like a zombie. In her mind, she paled, her hair standing on its ends. Ranma tried to jump up, to move her numb body, but the stone floor in her field of vision did not even twitch. Instead, muted but still disgusting wet sounds reached from somewhere to her left. Oh no, Ranma thought, nauseated: she suddenly remembered the closing rows of blades. And the moment when she put Brya's 'dead-raising' construct to her forehead. The same as Akane did.

Ranma felt like throwing up. She had to see the final proof. She began making walking motions with her fingers. There was a wet rustling from the left. She kept trying, moving her fingers stubbornly. The rustling grew closer, then an arm severed at the elbow crawled into her field of vision trailing torn sinews.

Ranma tried to scream but her lungs were somewhere on the floor, so her scream came out utterly sile— ear-splittingly loud. She sat up in a jerk surveying the inside of the rail car with eyes bleary from sleep.

A dream? That was just a dream! A silly nightmare! Ranma laughed weakly with relief.

"What are you yelling for?" Akane asked her angrily.

Ahta just cleared his ringing ears.

"I, well, err..." Ranma mentally panicked trying to find an excuse, to avoid explaining her nightmare. After that... accident with Akane her nerves were frayed, while the desire to shield her wife from any trouble grew overwhelming, able to overcome any logic. "I, heh-heh, just a practical joke."

"Oh, you joked..." The upper part of Akane's face was hidden by an ominous, unnaturally deep shadow — much deeper that her short hair would be able to provide. "I'd like to ask you..." Her fist slammed into Ranma's ear with the force of a jackhammer throwing the pigtailed girl off the bench. "TO NEVER JOKE LIKE THAT AGAIN!"

"Hey, hey, coolant," Ahta squeaked, having pulled his legs up and plastered himself into a corner.

It's fine, Ranma thought feeling her ear pulsate with pain, swelling. It's good. You remain blissfully oblivious, my dear. My stupid fears haven't touched you.

(シーンブレイク)

Ami let out a quiet sigh. Her head was swelling from all this work with formulas in a notation she wasn't used to. From having to fill in blanks in the local theory of spatial manipulations. She would have gotten stuck long ago if not the portal controller with its built-in function of calculating path to the next token. The reality of inter-universal transit proved to be inhumanly complex, much more so than she had thought based on her experience of creating a portal into the pocket universe of the Dark Kingdom. Even she, with her intellect, would've needed years. Thankfully, there was a cheat sheet, an Ariadne's thread of the series of coordinate transformation matrices pointing the way to the next token.

The remaining work was a trifle: to extricate the part of transformation corresponding to transiting to the next world and implement it in formulas for setting the portal device. A low-powered portal device designed for connecting to elemental pseudoplanes, utterly unsuitable for the task at hand.

Energy cost was the limiting factor. Ami was re-calculating all formulas from scratch for the third time now, trying to get sane values. But there were no reasons for optimism yet.

The two scientists weren't helping, busy squabbling on that very topic.

"Come on!" argued the cyan-haired old lady. "The practical benefits will outweigh any cost anyway!"

"For your society, maybe," the bald shorty wasn't giving up. "While my center would lose its entire budget for the next three to five thousands."

"Don't be so petty," Khassahcht was admonishing him. "This breakthrough will bring so much good for the entirety of mankind, there is no way your center would not benefit from it."

"Pretty words," disagreed Lukhyt. "Even if this reckless scheme of yours succeeds, have you seen the resource cost? How much phasemana per thousand would we need for keeping a minimal trade exchange with other universes?"

Ami shrugged with guilt, her eyes firmly on the calculating board.

"Who, should I ask," continued the bald mage, "will be hunting phase swallowers in industrial quantities? Did you forget the specific mortality? Well, I can remind you: almost two thousandths!"

Ami started: was their way further on paid with human lives?

"Please, there is no need for such dramatism," Khassacht said waving him off. "If need arises, we'll repurpose a harvester or build a specialized machine for your swallowers. We'll get them.

(シーンブレイク)

When the train stopped, Ranma stepped up to the door and reached for the handwheel.

"Stop, don't be stupid!" Jumping up to her, Akane stopped her with a smack upside her head. "Who told you you can leave? Wait until they come and open!"

"Fort Lykht is a small station," Ahta noted with disapproval as he turned the handwheel wlile Ranma was rubbing the back of her head. "We do everything by ourselves here."

Ranma cautiously slid the door aside. The car was filled with the glow of setting mini-suns, the stuffy heat of the wasteland breathing in her face. Shivering from the sharp transition she took a quick look around. Stack of assembled railroad sections, were stretching some distance away along the track, rails pre-assembled, connected with cross-ties. To the right, right beyond the tail of the train, there was a double chain-link fence reinforced with a grate along its bottom. To the left there were stacks of crates resting on the ground. Beyond these there was a two-story full-metal building, its edges rounded and its windows like slits. Some kind of latticed frame was rotating slowly on its top.

It was clear they weren't in an oasis.

Ranma jumped down to the hard ground of the wasteland. The grass, where it wasn't trampled down, was gray and withered, covered in white streaks as if it had been sprayed with some poison. Ranma jumped up to the car roof to take a better look around. The train was standing inside a round, fenced off territory of some three hundred meters in diameter, with the small building at its very center. This circle of bare ground and dead gray grass was lined with branching rail tracks, almost like a common rail station — except the gaps between the tracks were thirty of forty meters. Ranma counted six parallel tracks. Entering as a single track, these branched, then joined again on the opposite side leaving the yard as a single track again.

The fenced-off space was mostly empty, with rare stacks of rail sections, boxes or aluminum I-beams stored on the ground.

"Help me carry the cabbage," Ahta called from below. "They need five boxes in total."

Ranma took one last look around. She noticed a rise in the ground on the side the train came from, barely visible through the blurry haze common for the wasteland. Were they close to some oasis, but outside? She hopped down.

Waving off all attempts to help her, Akane took all five boxes holding these over her head for balance. The long flat boxes of three meters in length had mesh wire sides and latticed tops, making for a wobbly tower as tall as Akane was. She was balancing it easily.

The two girls and one guy went to the small building.

"What are we going to do?" Ranma asked Ahta once she overcame her unusual shyness. Not that she was afraid of him.. her. More likely, of herself.

"Our task is to comb the area using your device as a detector. As I understand from what I've been explained, it points distance in meters."

"Erm..." Ranma opened the medallion, only to stare at the empty screen and a lot of buttons labeled with big words surrounding the Latin keyboard in the center. "I think it's the 'List of functions'? Or 'Analysis'...?"

"Give it to me," Akane said as she turned around to hand the boxes to the other girl, her arms outstretched.

"You two are something," Ahta mumbled under his breath. "It's almost three hundred kilograms of cabbage."

Ranma let out a heavy sigh as she hung the medallion on her wife's neck before taking the boxes. She held them over her head as well.

Akane clicked the buttons some. "All right, it gives the numbers..." Suddenly, she exploded with outrage: "What's with this thing! From seven hundred meters to infinity?！"

"Most probably, the artifact in question must be inside your auric event horizon for this to work," Ahta reassured her. "Coherence is poor at distances more than four hundred meters, the vast majority of location methods doesn't work. This also dictates the diameter of the station zone. It couldn't be made larger, the only solution is adding yet another zone close to it." He pointed at the roof of the building.

Close up, it was resembling a bunker as the thickness of its aluminum walls became apparent. The edges of the roof and the narrow, slit-like windows were bristling with sharp spikes. The thing rotating on the roof looked like a radar: it was a conglomeration of rods and cables. But there were also ledges. With small fuzzy forms languishing on them, napping... Ranma misstepped almost dropping the boxes. Squirrels! All with their muzzles facing in the same direction. The 'radar' was slowly, inexorably turning towards the three newcomers. Ranma swallowed. One squirrel, a foxy one, opened its eyes and stared at the gray-haired girl. Ranma shuddered.

The door of the bunker building was opening outwards. It was heavy, with rounded corners and a handwheel in its center. Twirling it Ahta swung the door open with effort.

"Serious stuff," Ranma approved involuntarily as it became apparent that the door was some thirty centimeters thick, narrowing slightly in small steps. Considering the fact that the local aluminum was two or three times more durable than good steel, even a siege youma would have a hard time bashing such a door in.

Akane had to close the medallion and take the rear end of the boxes. The girls squatted to make the top box fit through the door. Beyond the door there was an airlock exactly big enough to accommodate two people carrying a box. Ahta closed the outer door, turned the handwheel locking it and only then pushed past the girls to open the inner door.

"I see you take safety seriously," Akane noted.

"Of course!" he agreed. "An idiot that shirks it would be catapulted expeditiously, to tend to garden beds. Every kind of extra-oasis activity does have its own strict mortality norms, how else!"

Akane was taken aback by such a reply, having no words to respond.

Beyond the inner door, right across it, there was a storage room door. They put the cabbage in a cooler section delimited by a metallic roller shutter.

"Where should we go now?" Ranma inquired. The first floor only consisted of the storage room and a stairway up running in parallel to the airlock but in other direction. The storage room door was placed at a small angle, so that a box could be easily dragged upstairs from the storage.

"Necessity to fill," explained Ahta.

Still, this translation is far from perfect, thought Ranma.

They took the stairs. The second floor turned out to consist of one large room spanning the entire bunker. Ranma cautiously glanced around if there were any squirrels loitering around. There were none.

The first thing attracting attention was a machine-gun on a stand pointing down at the stairs. Very well thought out: if the things rush en masse they'll be all mowed down here from their backs. Other than that, the room contained storage racks reaching the ceiling full of weapons and some tools. There were also stacks of crates along the walls and two more staircases leading back to the first floor. As is befitting of a real fortress: to reach the sleeping people, enemy have to go through the second floor first it being a good line of last defense.

There was a desk near the machine-gun, cluttered with stacks of papers.

"Good day," Ahta greeted the desk.

A head of a severe mustached man rose from behind the papers and folders. "Positive," he replied. "Necessity?"

"To fill," Ahta explained gesturing towards the girls. "Non-typical. You see, these two are aliens, not registered anywhere. Have to work inside the inner perimeter to harvest an artifact."

"Using form five, then," the man grumbled digging through the papers. "I hope they at least have their registration from the bottom if they are from there?"

"Alas," Ahta said, shrugging. "They are from another universe."

"Bullshit?" The mustached one raised his head to cast a measuring look at the girls.

"No, it's confirmed," Ahta replied. "Just believe me, uncle Ysltt, there are amazing things happening now! The Awesome Old Hag develops it together with Baldy."

"Those two? Together?" Ysltt shook his head in amazement. "Then I'm ready to believe even in the end of the world." He looked the girls over once more, then dug into papers mumbling "Then we have to use the form five-sch... Which backer should I write in?"

"Erm, the Society of Ah-constructing?" Ahta suggested, unsure. "Or, better, the Center of planaristics?"

Ranma was utterly disinterested in all this bureaucratic stuff of theirs. She continued studying the room, attracted by a quiet, regular clinking from behind. It turned out there was a big ring of round lamps attached between two racks in such a way that the mustached man could see it well from his place. All the lamps were glowing green. One after another the lamps were blinking accompanied with a quiet clinking. It was obvious that the speed of this process corresponded to the slow rotation of that squirrel-bearing thingamabob on the roof. Ranma shivered: what if one comes down here to take a leak or to eat?

To distract herself from the unnerving thoughts she started studying the weapons on the racks. There was very little variety: revolvers, shotguns with drum magazines, submachineguns with drum magazines. Each of the three kinds was presented in numbers, accompanied with small pyramids of magazines and large, open boxes with ammo. Just like nuts in a mall: each box did even have a scoop.

Ranma picked one revolver round up, to take a better look. This resulted in a heavy slap upside her head from her spouse.

"Don't stick your hands where they don't belong!" Akane hissed, irritated for some obscure reason.

Ranma sighed quietly, unable to object due to feeling too much reverence towards her wife after all they were through

It was Ahta who couldn't take this anymore: "Are you sure you are married?" he asked crossing his arms and frowning at Akane with disapproval. "Is it fitting for a spouse to treat their significant other like that? Is it fitting to tolerate such misconduct?"

"He is, uh..." Akane tried to defend herself tentatively. "He is being a fool again..." Abashed, she tore the round from Ranma's hand and put it back in the box.

Ranma was having conflicted feelings: on one hand, his wife was being badmouthed. On the other hand, it was being done to protect himself. "But she's a girl," the pigtailed girl tried to excuse her significant other.

"And how does that relate?" Ahta asked harshly.

Ranma blinked. Wasn't this obvious? "Well, I'm a guy, she's a girl," she tried explaining again.

"So what?" Ahta was not accepting such an argument. "How does that give her right to beat on you?"

"Well, err," Ranma was confused, not expecting such an outlook. "Uh, she's a girl..."

Akane felt terribly embarrassed. She lowered her eyes, blushing.

"You are both people," Ahta replied sharply. "Man, woman — all are equal before Death." His voice was full of resolute conviction. "Gender handicaps and bonuses may affect your specialization choice, but for human relationships these are nothing!"

Ranma did not have an answer for that. She had never looked at it from that point of view. Men have their own roles, women have their own, acting these roles for centuries to the best of their abilities. Both husband and wife do have their duties. Each their own. Right?

"I'm sorry, Ranma," Akane said quietly. She then put her arms around the gray-haired girl's shoulders. "I just... I won't do that again, I promise."

"Aw, I don't mind at all," Ranma yielded at once.

"What will your weapon loadout be?" the mustached one interrupted them.

"Weapons?" Ranma glanced at the racks of firearms. "We kind of don't need it. We'll make do without it."

"They are masters of martial acrobatics," Ahta explained.

Ysltt stared at him like he was a complete idiot. "Daughter, do these aliens of yours even know that a third of the creatures kills with a touch?"

"We know," Ranma hurried to reassure him. "We won't let hem closer than ten meters!"

"By the way," Ahta asked with sudden concern, "how are you going to do with only your bare hands?"

"With a ki blast," Ranma explained the obvious.

"With an air blast?" Ata clarified.

"Of air charged with emotion," Ranma explained feeling irritation at the medallion suddenly showing aptitude for lame puns.

"Of air charged with air? It's the translation again, isn't it?"

"No! With life energy, simply speaking. I'll show you when we get outside."

"And how effective it is?" Ysltt inquired.

"Well..." Ranma smirked. "Effective enough to keep someone like me from getting into the melee range if used on open ground with no cover."

"I see." The mustached one wrote something in the form. "Take revolvers then, otherwise you'd have to fill the liability waiver and accompanying forms." He waved a _thick_ ·pack of blanks in the air.

"Uhh..." Aha stared at the girls with puppy dog eyes.

"All right, we'll take 'em," Ranma reassured him. "I would never have though I'd be walking around with a revolver." She grabbed a nearest one from the rack and put it in her pocket.

Ahta made a pointed cough as he picked a holster with a cartridge belt from the next rack. It was made of thick rough fabric with metallic insets.

"Oh. Of course." Ranma quickly girdled herself with the holster and moved the revolver there.

While Akane was equipping herself, Ranma pulled the revolver out again to examine it. "I wonder how does one disassemble it?"

"Disassemble?" Ahta asked. "What for?"

"Well..." Ranma frowned. "To clean it... I don't know much about guns, but even I had heard you have to disassemble and clean them each time after you shoot, otherwise the mechanism mucks up with soot."

"What soot?" Ahta saked in confusion.

"Uhh, from gunpowder?" Ranma was beginning to think that medallion started raving again. were they talking about the same thing even? "That pushes the bullet when it burns?"

"But the bullet is pushed by inert gas," Ahta corrected. "The liquefied nitrogen in the cartridge is heated by runaway discharge of a fire rune that is engraved inside on the base. Then it pushes the bullet as it expands. Where would sooth come from?"

"Oh!" Ranma slapped her forehead. "In our world, guns aren't magical so they use fast-burning chemicals." She replaced the revolver in its holster.

"Let's go?" Akane suggested.

As they were walking towards the exit, Ranma paused at one rack: "What is this weird gun?" she asked pointing at a bulky weapon that attracted her curiosity. It had a massive ribbed barrel so thick her fist could fit in there. There were lots of gauges and verniers. The most prominent feature were three large cylindrical tanks connected with thick armored hoses. The tank set had shoulder straps, intended to be worn like a backpack. All the three were of different colors, labeled. But the medallion couldn't translate written language.

"It's tarydinator," Ahta said matter-of-factly. "It's for sweeping purges only, too bothersome a gun: you have to refill it often, to watch the pressure and the force field strength constantly. It shoots crystals of concentrated water of life freezing it on the fly in the barrel. You can shoot in bursts, ten to twelve shots per second, or in salvos, akin to a buckshotgun, with approximately one shot per second. It's heavy, the ammo can't be stored for long so you have to resupply it constantly. In short, when you have to claim land from endless hordes this gun is priceless. The rest of the time it sits in storage gathering dust. By the way, far from every creature is affected by water of life. The third tank here is for iodinated water of death. But you have to figure it out in time and manage to switch."

"Don't forget the lights, night is coming!" the mustached man reminded them.

"Of course!" Ahta grabbed three forehead lights with straps.

They walked outside leaving the station zone right after the train: it wasn't stopping at this station for long. The three token explorers waved goodbye at the gunmen of the tail gun platform, its bulky cow-catcher slowly receding into the blinding sunset glow. The chain-link gate rattled behind their backs, closing. Akane opened the medallion, then began breathing noisily through her nose. Ranma glanced at her with concern: it looked like her wife was developing allergy to the infernal contraption.

"Where to now?" Ranma asked taking a careful look around. "Is this your typical noxland?"

The sunset was on its most incovenient stage, with the glowing haze hiding the distance more effectively than any darkness could. The sky overhead was gradually darkening.

"Not exactly," Ahta corrected her adjusting the straps and putting the light on his head. "We are inside a withered oasis. Took it from the creeps not so long ago. It's of course fenced off along its edge and purged, otherwise no one would let you just waltz out like that, especially with night coming. But keep your guard. The fence is not guarded, you must understand." Pulling out a map he found their bearings and strode forward keeping his right arm close to his holster.

"A withered oasis?"

"Well, an oasis lives for four or five hundred thousand, then it gradually dies down turning into a branch of noxland, if unusually rich in resources. But that's usually not true as many former oases are mined through and through even from before the written history, all the resources depleted.

"So one day humans will have no place to live?" Akane exclaimed, horrified.

"No." Ahta laughed. "It's not that gloomy. Sometimes, a new oasis emerges on a formerly vacant ground. You'd better not stand close, of course. The birth of a new oasis isn't called 'Big Bang' for nothing."

After walking for some four hundred meters they had left a crumbling ruin of the central spire to their right, surrounded with a dry depression. The sunset was dying down, the sky turned greenish with stars and sheets of auroras emerging slowly. The lights turned on on their own. Ranma pulled her light out from her pocked and began adjusting the straps squinting and grumbling when the light hit her eyes.

"This is approximately the place." Ahta gestured around. "Now your detector should be working properly and we will easily find the artifact in question. In a circle with diameter of a hundred meters it's piece of cake."

You shouldn't have said that, missy, Ranma thought with disapproval.

Akane opened the medallion. Stared at the screen. Her eye began twitching.

"What?" Ranma asked cautiously.

Silently, Akane held the medallion out for her.

"56 to 108 meters..." Ranma read from the screen. The numbers changed. "Now 63 to 120... Wouldn't it be easier to simply comb around?"

"Let's try to mark the smallest one of several measurements on the map," suggested Ahta.

They did that, walking to and fro for a whole hour marring the map with pencil marks. In the end they got a tentative minimum of some forty meters. Inside a radius of some sixty meters.

"I'm afraid this could only mean one thing," Ahta concluded as he checked the map. "We have to get down in the dungeons."

"There are dungeons here?" Ranma asked feeling a chill travel down her spine.

"There are," Ahta confirmed squinting at the map. "As in any other withered oasis. What a snag, the tunnels are only mapped for a small distance from the entrance... This oasis is ancient, it's probably several millions old. There are no resources, that's why no one ever bothered claiming it."

Following the map, they walked a hundred meters away and descended into the dry depression of a former lake. there, amidst the coarse grass they found a smooth, round hole prudently blocked with a grate.

"Out of luck again!" Ahta exclaimed at the sight of a massive padlock.

Akane stepped forward glad to have something to vent on. The grate emitted a pitiful dying creak. A twisted bar popped out with a clang. The padlock remained intact, but there was now a hole pushed apart in the bent grate, large enough to get through.

"Well... That works too," approved Ahta.

They went in. A round tunnel of some three meters in diameter was leading steeply down twisting chaotically.

"Doesn't look like a mine," Ranma noted surveying the dark, smooth walls of solid rock. "More like a huge wormhole." She turned to Ahta. "Hey, couldn't by any chance the master of this cozy nook crawl out to greet us?"

"No, of course not," Ahta reassured her. Everything here died ages ago. "Well, until you decide to visit places a few hundred meters lower... But the thermal gradient is steep here, so the heat of the magmatic intrusion remains would kill you well before you could meet any... manifestations. These die without out-of-the-scale levels of magic of life as quickly and surely as the creatures of noxland die in an oasis!"

"Oh. Thanks, that reassures me," Ranma grumbled in reply. It was nice to know that these tunnels were stretching down to fiery abyssal depths inhabited by... things.

After some meandering they had reached the point under that area on the surface where the medallion had displayed the minimum. The tunnel was starting to branch here.

Akane opened the medallion. She looked at the screen. With a feat of willpower, she managed to keep her eye from twitching. Then she growled, in a good imitation of a cave bear: "33 to 60."

They tried walking to and fro down the twisting, branching tunnels. The uncertainty was hopelessly large, the medallion could show 15, then, just five meters later show 70. Ranma was feeling this dungeon pressing down on her psyche: the unremarkable tunnels were stretching in all directions branching, merging, twisting sharply up and down. Like gray bowels.

"We can keep searching for it till the end of time," Ahta grumbled. "We have to split to comb this area thoroughly. Let me take the upper levels, Akane the middle and Ranma the lower ones. Just keep your eyes open. They had checked this area of course, but they always do this hastily, with a quick and dirty magical scan. Who knows what the creeps could have left lying around. So don't touch anything, all right? Don't come close, even." He handed the girls chunks of white rock to mark checked passages. Then he disappeared in a tunnel leading to the upper levels.

"I don't like this idea," Ranma grumbled with distaste. She was filled with an overpowering apprehension.

"All right, your suggestion then?" Akane made a pointed pause.

"Ah?！" Ranma's eyes opened wide in sudden realization. "That...!"

"What's wrong with you?" Akane asked worriedly.

"That's it!" The gray haired girl hit slapped her fist against her palm. "It was a prophetic dream!"

"Those are impossible here, right?" Akane objected doubtfully. "Maybe it's just deja vu? Let me check if you have a fever." She placed her palm against her husband's forehead.

"I don't know if it is possible or not, but I saw all of this already," the pigtailed girl replied. "Down to the smallest gesture, up to a word. Right before..." She shuddered. "Before I was cut to pieces."

Akane gasped. "So that's why you yelled back then up—"

"Let's watch the floor," Ranma cut her short as she bent down to better illuminate the floor with her forehead light. "The ceiling too. They had checked it, all right. Probably scanned with magic against magical traps. But what about pressure plates? Let's go warn Ahta first while she haven't stepped into one yet. We'll also ask her if they have something like mine detectors for such cases."

"How could that be," Akane mumbled, disheartened. "The loop was closed."

"Future isn't set in stone," Ranma replied harshly. "What happens if I change my mind and make a turn towards the trap?"

"The medallion would give a signal and..." Akane fell silent in sudden realization. "Oh. I would have it with me at the time!"

"Exactly. Ahta! Hey, Ahta!"

(シーンブレイク)

"That's complete and utter nonsense!" the bald shorty was shouting, spit flying. Ami didn't even need the translation. The transformation she and the elderly sorceress had managed to draw using mutual contradictions between their outlooks and complementing each other's work, it was contradicting the officially accepted theory so much, he was simply unable to accept such revolutionary concepts.

Ami couldn't blame him for that. Her head was threatening to split. The breakthrough cost them a lot of mental effort.

"But this 'nonsence' converges too well to be such," Khassacht parried. She was probably tired too, but she wasn't showing it. "Using three independent methods. And the cost, look at the energy cost! After a small optimization it'll require even less than connecting to most pseudo-planes!"

Ami winced: this 'small optimization' was promising to become yet another battle against formulas in unfamiliar notation. It was a hellish strain, even with the local mentha-boards for automated processing of formulas, in many aspects more convenient than computers back home.

"Do as you please!" Lukhyt shouted back angrily before he left trying to slam the armored door behind him. It proved to be too heavy for that.

"A pity," Khassacht commented. "Without him tuning the portal will be much harder. Unfortunately, I do not specialize in fine tuning such systems..." She turned to the lab assistents to continue in a sweetest voice: "Boys, who of you is good at tuning the portal array?"

(シーンブレイク)

"Forgive me, but I'll never believe that clairvoyance is real," Ahta noted sceptically, wrapping the words 'utter nonsence' into a more polite form.

"But In our world it does work," Ranma said.

"What, really?" Ahta stopped sharply turning to face Ranma which brought them uncomfortably close. She moved away with displeasure. "There are worlds out there where this anti-scientific fiction is reality?"

"It's quite real," Akane affirmed. "We also know our— someone's daughter from the future who time traveled to visit us. And we have another friend who has prophetic visions... even if they are so vague even she can't make heads or tails out of them."

"Come to think of it," Ranma added, "my teleportation includes a form of clairvoyance too. I move faster than light, but to move I have to, uh, get a good feel of the destination. So I am a kind of visionary too." She smirked. "I'm so badass that even the causality principle—"

"What" Akane turned to her seeing Ranma suddenly freeze mid-sentence.

"Stop!" the pigtailed girl exclaimed tensely. "It's the place!" She pointed at a slightly discolored part of the floor. "It's... that pressure plate." She shuddered.

"Really, a pressure plate trap!" Ahta replied, shocked. He then frowned. "But maybe you are experiencing deja vu? Maybe in reality it's some sort of instinctive trap sense or something similar?"

"Let's trigger it and you will see," Ranma said. "There are things kinda transparent scissors bursting out of the walls." She started searching for something to drop, but the tunnel was smooth, without any convenient loose rocks.

"From the walls?" Ahta peered at the smooth stone that did not have a slightest crack. "I don't think so, these are completely undisturbed." He knocked at the wall, listening. Then he pulled out his white stone and quickly drew some sort of squiggle. It reminded Akane of calligraphy at home: the same fast, sprawling motions, the same harmony hidden in the seemingly sloppy lines. "There is nothing in the walls," Ahta concluded.

"I'll go bring a bar from the grate," Ranma suggested.

"No need to," Ahta stopped her. Holding his rock in a fist he made several sweeping hand motions over it. Then he threw it at the trap.

The small pebble hit the plate with such force as if it weighed half a hundred kilograms, dust and stone crumbles flying. Then it remained as if glued there, inside the suspiciously discolored spot.

The trap clicked loudly. Then a much louder crunch sounded as several pairs of ghostly blades erupted from the tunnel walls in bursts of pulverized rock, closing rapidly like giant scisors.

When they closed, the blades disappeared without a sound.

"Kinda like that," Ranma summed up.

"An Ahs-construct," Ahta whispered in shock. "It couldn't be anything else."

"You'd be..." Akane had an urgent need for a paper bag. "But it's... You could dodge..."

"I was lost in thought," Ranma explained. "Back there, in the dream. I screwed up, didn't react until there was nowhere to dodge to. Was lying there until—" She shut herself up but it was too late.

"The zombie-raising construct!" Akane said with a gasp as she remembered her own awakening without her lower body. "You'd remain... conscious..." Stumbling, she steadied herself against the tunnel wall as she fought the nausea with all she had.

"I blurted out again," Ranma grumbled unhappily. Then she turned to Ahta: "So it was an ahs-construct, you say?"

"Not magic, for sure," he confirmed, frowning and worried. "By all signs it couldn't have been anything but an Ahs-construct. That's bad. It means the trap was set up by humans."

"Humans?" Ranma asked.

"Well, what is the source of Ahs-constructs? The Ahs-Lords. It's their way of participating in the economy. They put a part of their power into creating Ahs-constructs which are one of the rarest resources in our world, with stablest exchange rates, along with platinum and vanadium... But what a waste, using Ahs-constructs for traps!"

At this moment they were interrupted by an ugly cackle reaching from deeper in the tunnel. All three of them tensed.

A rhythmical, whispering rustle approached from the darkness beyond the tunnel bend. Then a creature came into view. At first glance it looked like an unpleasantly glossy white hybrid of a giant woodlouse with a humanoid torso growing out of it, the arms unnaturally long and thin. The misshapen head on a disgustingly long neck was glaring with two deeply seated black eyes.

"Yeah, Brya was much nicer," Ranma noted off-hand as she flowed into a deceptively relaxed stance. _This_ ·psycho wasn't looking even remotely friendly or harmless.

Ahta pulled his revolver out without a moment's hesitation. The gunshot rattled their ears in the confined tunnel. The creature proved to be very fast: the bullet only smashed the fringe of short tentacles along its left flank although the blond was aiming at its centre of mass. The second bullet hit true... to ricochet from a barrier that had flashed momentarily with crystalline facets around the fist the white woodlousetaur managed to throw forward.

"Ahs-shahs-ah?" Ahta exclaimed in shock as he froze, his gun still aimed at the creature.

Ranma squinted suspiciously. That wasn't just a fist, the thing was holding something in it.

"Ahs-construct?" the medallion repeated belatedly attracting attention to the fact that you couldn't rely on the translation in fast-paced combat.

Akane moved forward.

"Syytr lschass, schischkris ta!" Ahta called out to her in alarm as he pointed at the damaged tentacles. The uniform white mass was writhing, resembling either a slo-mo boiling or a mass of worms. The resilient fringe framing the woodlouse body was regenerating visibly.

"Disgusting!" Akane backed away.

"Le's hit it together?" Ranma asked as she moved her hands back and to the right.

"Don't touch, absorption/merger danger!" the medallion caught up.

"I could figure that on my own," the gray-haired girl grumbled as she exchanged glances with her wife. "Mokou..."  
"Raitsui..."

Ahta turned towards them in awe forgetting to watch the enemy in his amazement.

The white thing cocked its head, glaring.

"..Takabisha!"  
"..Dan!"

Two ki-blasts hit at once, spaced approximately a meter apart to prevent the enemy from blocking both. The woodlousetaur threw its clenched fist in between. The charges of ki disintegrated, but the resulting burst of air pressure was enough to throw the creature a couple meters backwards. It started screeching something, spit flying.

"Any ideas?" Akane asked.

"I don't like its fist," Ranma replied. "There's something—"

"I'll be error diction is not clear enough you," the medallion tried valiantly to translate. "Deforming/warping error, diction not clear enough grating in a rotating manner error, phrase not finished."

The glossy-white creature fell silent and opened its fist with deliberate slowness letting them take a look at the thing resting on the palm... It was the orb of a token! Then it croaked something triumphantly.

"The bastard!" Ranma snapped out with irritation.

"So it was because of him!" Akane grew outraged. "That's why we couldn't find the token! We were running all over the place taking measures and he was walking around with it!"

"Die," the medallion translated emotionlessly.

"Watch out," Ranma warned quietly: the woodlousetaur was making some suspicious gestures over the token with its left hand.

The creature shrieked with malice as it sent a veritable fan of ghostly blades flying at the three humans. The crunching of crushed stone masked any other sounds, the white bastard disappeared behind thick clouds of dust lit with their forehead lights.

"Whoops!" Ranma exclaimed as she deliberately toppled Ahta who was running away, sluggishly in her perception. Grabbing the guy like a sack of potatoes she dashed away: the windmilling blades were gaining, it took only a second for these to traverse from the enemy to the spot formerly occupied by the humans.

Ranma was trying frantically to remember the exact route back to the surface, afraid the enemy technique would chase them to the exit.

Fortunately, this thing proved to lack homing as it sank into the rock at the first turn, moving in a straight line. the girls stopped listening carefully. The ground kept shaking for a couple seconds more with crackling and rumbling, then everything went silent except an occasional falling pebble.

Visibility had decreased sharply:the lights were only making the clouds of suffocating dust look denser by lighting them.

"Go back to it!" Ranma shouted as she dashed back towards the enemy. Akane followed, catching up to her. After a moment of hesitation Ahta rushed after them slowly, stumbling on the crushed rocks. The tunnel grew narrower, its right wall now a flowing mass of gravel.

"Why!" Akane managed on the run.

The air was a bit clearer at the initial spot, the white creature visible through the dust at its previous position. The tunnel was relatively intact here, its walls only carved with deep gouges.

"We can't let it get away—" Ranma began explaining. The woodlousetaur shrieked as it noticed them, beginning its hand gestures again. "Mokou Takabisha!"

The bastard proved to be fast enough to block with the token. The ki blast disappeared without a trace, but it did stop the creature from making its gestures.

"Excellent!" Ranma exclaimed with joy. "It can't use its barrier and that technique at the same time!"

"But it's a stalemate anyway," Akane reminded her worriedly. "We have nothing we—" Her eyes lit with enthusiasm. "I have an idea! Cover me!"

"Don't..." Ranma squeaked feeling her insides collapse into a pit of ice. Not again! What was she planning? "Don't touch it!"

"I know!" Akane replied without looking as she began moving at the enemy.

"Mokou Takabisha!"

The ki blast came out anemic: Ranma was too beside herself with worry to muster enough confidence. It did its job, though, distracting the monster. Akane rushed faster than wind, rebounding from the wall and zipping over the enemy's head as it concentrated on putting up a barrier. The woodlousetaur was barely a meter high, so the tunnel with diameter of some three meters gave her lots of space to pass the creature safely. But she didn't just pass it, she managed to snap out a ki blast of her own. Weak as it was, it hurt the enemy's tail. Then she disappeared beyond the bend of the tunnel turning to the right. Only a moving spot of light in the dusty air was giving her presence away.

The white thing went apeshit. Turning around with an angry screech it began making its gestures aiming after the girl who had disappeared beyond the bend. It barely had enough time to throw its arm backwards when the angry Ranma sent a mighty ki blast its way.

"Sah tschaust chkik?" Ahta asked her worriedly as he finally caught up with her, his revolver on ready.

"I'm bluffing!" Akane's shout rang clearly from beyond the bend. The spot of light jerked, there was the click of a trap activating, then the loud crunch of blades erupting from the walls. The spot of light stopped moving. The creature snorted with satisfaction as it turned to face Ranma.

If not the timely warning, the pigtailed girl would have had a heart attack right then and there. Even so she almost felt sick at he sound of a trap activating.

"Mokou..." Ranma began slowly, gathering a charge of energy in her hands pulled back.

The woodlousetaur screeched hurrying with its gestures, trying to make it itn time.

"..Taka..bisha!"

An extremely powerful ki blast streaked towards the monster. It threw its arm forward beforehand, snarling and showing its small, shark-like teeth.

The second ki blast hit its unprotected back simultaneosly with the first one, pushing the enemy down and sending it sliding towards Ranma with its face against the ground. Did they make it...? She stepped back, away from the white stuff the woodlousetaur's wounded back was bleeding like glossy maggots.

Screeching, the wounded thing straiightened its torso up and slid like mercury towards the wall, its woodlouse body rising up the tunnel curvature. The bastard covered itself with the token, its barrier now flickering non-stop like ghostly crystalline facets.

"The nerve!" Akane voiced everyone's thoughts.

A pause followed. The girls were glaring a the owner of the second-to-last token from two sides. It was sneering in return.

"Maybe we should have tried asking it nicely from the start?" Ranma asked rhetorically as she turned towards Ahta. "Huh, Miss Rapid Shot?"

"Meaningless," he retorted matter-of-factly. "It's a creep. It's impossible apriori to converse with them due to their... physiological features. In their natural habitat they are quasi-stable psychos and can act quasi-reasonably, but at the sight or smell of a human they become _un_ stable psychos."

"So, not a chance?"

"It'd devour you," Ahta explained. "Well, or rape you _then_ ·devour you. That's a certainty."

"Bugger." Ranma glared at the creep. It hissed in return. "What should we do now? Any ideas how to pluck it out of that barrier?"

"By the rules, we have to retreat and return with a purge team. If we are allowed to join it. But a creep using an Ahs-construct, not to say a construct of such power... That's unprecedented. I'm afraid our worrywarts will begin gathering a joint strike troop from all the oases around."

"We can't let it go!" Ranma objected heatedly.

"Why?" Ahta asked with confusion.

"Oh!" Ranma got it. "So you haven't heard me then! That bally in its hand over there is the token we are searching for!"

"Bullshit?" Ahta replied with disbelief.

"Here." Ranma hastily untied her bag to pull one of the tokens out. The ball was glinting like mercury in her hand, angular black squiggles floating lazily inside it.

The guy made a step away with trepidation as he uttered something translated by the medallion as "error, a logic bomb in semantics".

At this moment the creep noticed the token in Ranma's hand. Screeching in horror it began making frantic gestures with his left hand over its token, glancing between the girls harriedly. Akane launched a ki blast at it which naturally disappeared but interrupted the spell.

Ranma squinted as if aiming. Then, suddenly, she threw her token!

The creep managed to throw its arm forward. The speeding token passed through the barrier as if it wasn't there. There was a crack, then two tokens were flying in different directions, the white creature screeching and shaking its bruised hand.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

The gunshots thundered in the confined tunnel. The creep was still slumping with its head smashed, bleeding white vileness, when Ahta began reloading.

It was a monster, you act quickly and matter-of-factly. Sailor Moon would have approved.

Rebounding from the walls, the tokens started rolling downhill, further down the tunnel, making loops and twists like balls in a pachinko game machine. Akane rushed to catch them.

Meanwhile, the woodlousetaur was melting. The white muck was flowing off twisting and writhing, laying open a twisted, blackened skeleton.

"Don't get close!" Ahta warned Akane again. She had caught the tokens — thankfully nothing sticks to them — and was about to jump over the mess.

"How would I get back, then?" she asked. "All the floor here— Ack!"

The white mass began boiling, spitting large drops. Hitting the walls, these drops were starting to move fluidly and chaotically, like glossy white woodlice. Akane backed away hastily.

Ahta made several hand gestures over a spare stone he pulled from his pocket. "Catch!" he shouted throwing the stone at her as soon as the translation finished. "Draw a warding circle across the tunnel circumference!" Pulling out yet another stone he demonstrated by quickly drawing a line across the tunnel taking great care to fill in gouges in the rock left by the 'fan of death'. Where he couldn't reach Ranma lifted him up by his legs.

Akane drew her line by simply running in a circle across walls and ceiling.

"Now step back five meters!" Ahta crouched down and started drawing a pattern of runes.

'This unlucky gal's magic is akin to writing haiku directly with ink on a canvas,' Ranma thought. 'The form seems free, she pauses at times in thought. And her face is... inspired.'

The wtite muck meanwhile had flowed transforming into multitude of of larger woodlice, the size of rats, that were streaming across the walls and ceiling with quiet but ugly squeaks. Touching the warding circle the little things were jerking back as if stung. Akane shivered thinking 'Each one kills with a touch, and no one knows if they can jump as well. Try break through these!' She cast a nervous glance back, into darkness enshrouded in dust.

Finishing with an energetic stroke Ahta jumped back. Ranma followed his example.

There was no glow, no other cheap effects. The woodlice simply fell silent all at once, freezing in place. They lost their gloss. The ones on the walls and ceiling fell down, smashing at times like they were made of cheescake.

Both the warding circles and the pattern of runes turned grey, vanishing slowly.

"It's safe now," Ahta said kicking the nearest woodlouse carcass. It shattered with a quiet splat.

(シーンブレイク)

"Mind explaining me this joint here?" Khassacht tapped her staff against a particular point of the spell circle that had grew so complex it was beginning to resemble a layout of some microprocessor. "What do you think would happen to it under load and where do you think will the backslash go?"

The guilty lab assistant tried to pull his head in between his shoulders as if expecting to be bonked with the crystal ball at the business end of the staff any moment. There were low scaffolds placed over the rune array, lab assistants crawling along them adding to the already complex patterns. They were drawing with deceptively simple white stones and brushes with silvery white paint.

"So let me explain it to you, young man," Khassacht finished harshly. "We'd be left without our last generator." She pointed her staff at burnt remains of a huge machine covered with tarpauline. "Even now, we have been forced to use a jury-rigged replacement for the last half thousand after another quite talented someone had the great idea to shave three percent off the mana cost by getting rid of the backup circuits."

Stimulated properly, the lab assistant hastily wiped the sloppy circuit using a sponge with neutraliser to begin drawing it from scratch.

The aged sorceress nodded regally as she continued circling the circular array scrutinizing it.

"I'm very sorry," Ami shouted as she leaned out of the observation deck window, "but the sector along the third axis doesn't converge! You have to add a balancer, or better two! And a stabilizing circuit over there!" She pointed with a magical pointer that worked very much like a laser pointer.

The lab assistants let out a collective groan: there was no place for more circuits there. They had to erase everything and redraw an entire sector from scratch, twice more densely.

(シーンブレイク)

Finally they were going back. Their task was completed successfully, the sixth token was in their possession. There was only one to go! Ranma tried in vain to curb the premature joy by reminding herself that bad things tend to happen on the final stretch. It wasn't working, she wasn't feeling like thinking about bad things.

It was stuffy and hot in a car without a climatic control unit, but that couldn't spoil their mood. Poor Ahta! He had to fill a lot of papers for the three of them to be allowed riding a train without a passenger block.

Now all three of them were sitting on boxes filled with some hardware, chatting animatedly. Nothing helps to forget former tensions like a battle fought together.

"It's like that old anecdote, you know," the blond was saying. "Mag-resources, thought the surveyor. Food, thought the mag-resources."

The girls laughed. Wiping the sweat from her forehead, Ranma took a gulp from a canteen. "By the way, I wanted to ask. Where does all that water of life and death come from? I think I have a good guess about the living one, there's a circular pond around the central peek that emanates life energy so strongly it's scary."

"You have good intuition," Ahta confirmed. "The water of life accumulates in the oasis springs where it is usually so concentrated it's instantly lethal. The Khas-Khasaeert spring, for example, has concentration of 180. You could use it for sterilizing."

"And the drinking water?"

"It's preferable for a human to drink water balanced at exactly zero. In practice, drinking water is usually made from the water of life by distilling the spring water to a factor of 0.04..0.1. The unneeded magic of life is vented into the atmosphere to not waste this resource. It's renewable, but the thicker the protective haze, the better. But that's second rate water. What we are now drinking is first rate water, for surveyors. Initially it's made 1.3, to compensate for the withering effect of the noxland. Because in the wasteland any water, including that in human body, is slowly turning into water of death logarithmically approaching minus one. That's mostly why it feels so unpleasant here, not because of the heat."

"Well, I figured that—" Ranma began, only to fall silent, them exclaim: "So that's why I was feeling so bad when we were walking the noxland the first time around! I was suffering from thirst even before that, so..."

"Thirst and noxland is a very dangerous combination," Ahta agreed. "It leads to quick exhaustion and weakness... Your endurance is impressive as you were walking for several hours, you say, without any protection."

"And bathing?" Akane inquired.

"The same second rate water. The distilling plants capacities are huge, the magic of fire is like dirt around here. It's what around a third of the creatures possess. By the way, all waste is drained down into the deep layers. It's about the level of tunnels we were exploring. In a living oasis the concentration there is higher that half a thousand, it's not magic of life anymore but wild magic. Even inorganic waste disintegrates there. And the water, of course, returns back to the spring, perfectly purified."

"Isn't that dangerous?" Ranma asked.

"It is," agreed the blond. "If one gets sloppy managing the house reductor. For most such idiots the first time their toilet begins a philosophy dispute with them is usually enough to get them straight. Well, the effects vary. Up to carnivorous cabbage growing out of their kitchen sink. Lethal cases are rare, but bitten asses happen. But these things usually happen in the frontier oases where population is lower and people are less disciplined."

"The horror." Ranma shivered. "Though that's convenient, I must admit. Do they fill steam locomotives with the same second rate?"

"No, they use fourth rate there. It's technical water, no one cares for neutrality much. It ranges from minus one to 3, it's more important that it is distilled. Well, there's also a third rate, for watering the gardens. It has the factor 6 to 8, which is perfect for vegetables and very bad for a human."

Ranma shivered involuntarily recalling how she drank her fill of 'technical' water from the cistern.

They sat in silence for awhile. The train was swaying slightly, clanking on the joints. There was stuffy twilight in the car, with the only light source being someone's forehead light lying on a box.

"How did you become a surveyor?" Akane asked the blond. "I mean, who usually chooses this job in your world? It's probably dangerous."

"Of course it's dangerous," he agreed. "That's why everyone goes through it as soon as they finish training. It's usually from the age of five or six thousands."

"That's approximately fourteen years old!" Akane was horrified. "Why so early?"

"Sailor Moon began at that age too," Ranma reminded her.

"What do you mean, why?" Ahta asked, confused. "Because they are most expendable members of the society at that age, without valuable knowledge or experience yet. Well, think for yourself: would you send an experienced scientist or an engineer to do a job where only 24percent survive to the end of their career? I mean, it's a temporary thing of course, a stage of life. Without going through it how could you know your worth if you aren't from that one fourth of survivors?"

Akane became visibly pale and sad.

"The living space is limited," Ranma reminded her grimly. "And don't make a face like that. Every outwardly nice society does have its underside." When the translation finished she addressed Ahta: "Ain't I right?"

"Indeed," he agreed. "It's the merciless law of survival of the fittest. Because the natural lifespan of a human is seventy to eighty thousands with reproductive functions working for most of it."

"It's some two hundred years," Akane translated. "Then... Then I can understand... But sending your own children to do the job where three fourths die horribly..." She suddered.

"Don't think of us as senseless," Ahta said quietly. "Each death is a tragedy. Each surveyor does everything possible and impossible to stay alive. They repeat the rules and instructions even in their sleep. But such is life. Such is our world, and we don't know another. The entirety of mankind, all the six hundred thousands of humans and two hundred thousands of neanderthals, live like that."

"What about going beyond the bounds of the planet?" Ranma asked.

"We tried. Earth is now passing through a dense globular cluster with several active pulsars. Beyond the atmospheric sheath, radiation kills anything in minutes. Astronomers say it's five or six millions until the cluster is passed. Maybe our descendants will try..."

"It's almost fifteen thousand years," Akane translated.

"But we won't give up," Ahta said with a fake optimism. "We'll make it. The mankind can't live in its cradle forever, as some ancient sage had said."

(シーンブレイク)

Somewhere in the core of the system, one of the control circuits made of chained time switched its status flag. The objects of influence were reaching the desired position, nudged there by light touches of controlled quantum fluctuations. Ready to play their preset parts.

The status quo will be kept for the next: undefined, no boundary conditions set. System integrity: perfect. Available energy: 2.3 by 10 times 73 Joules.

(シーンブレイク)

"Finally!" Ranma said with relief as the elevator platform reached the test projects cave.

Ahta had wanted to accompany them, to peek into a first alien world. There was no telling when they will repeat the experiment or if he could participate. But alas, he was caught by some bureaucrat and made writing reports. Ranma sympathized him. She had similar feelings toward the calculus homework: necessary but boring.

"Welcome back, guys!" Ami called to them from the observation deck window. "We can go in a few moments! Just let me finish the vertical adjustment!"

"If we want to do everything properly, we'd better deactivate it and re-check again," Khassacht grumbled. "I don't like these last-minute aiming problems. Especially considering the failure of that circuit to work," She pointed at a part of the spell circle glowing silvery white, "while its failure is theoretically impossible."

"Yes, but a comrade is waiting for us," Ami objected. "Besides, it's fixed by the center of Earth almost perfectly, as well to the latitude and the axis of rotation. Moreover, we'd be able to use our magic in that world. Worst case we'd disembark high in the sky. Ranma and Akane can land safely from a free fall from any height. That's probably why the loop remains closed whatever attitude I set. While we have these devices, success is assured. I already corrected the exit point according the nav-point they show...!"

"Well, when you have such a trump card," Khassacht called back doubtfully. "Anyway, do what you think is right. I got my bonuses, I fulfilled my part of the deal. From the cynical point of view I shouldn't care about your fate anymore."

"Finished!" Ami ran out of the armored deck to descend the stairs hastily and begin meandering along the delineated paths between spell areas.

The incredibly complex rune array began glowing brighter, a hazy ball forming above it with a crackle to begin growing. A light extendable bridge started reaching for it with a quiet clanking.

"Well, time to say our goodbyes," Akane said as she walked up a small flight of stairs to the bridge. "Farewell, granny. You did so much for us!"

"Thank you very much." Ranma bowed deeply.

Ami hastily joined them on the bridge: "Get ready, it'll activate soon!"

The murky ball flattened into a disc becoming darker and darker until it began flickering with something resembling frosty patterns over pitch black.

Nothing was happening.

"I don't get it." Ami looked at her medallion, then at the circular portal again. "The loop is closed, there should be landscape visible from high up."

"Mana expenditure is nominal!" someone called from the observation deck through the loudspeakers. "For how long should I hold it like that?"

"Shut it off," Khassacht waved tiredly. "We'll be remaking the vertical adjustment circuit. It's pretty obvious you opened the portal into solid ground."

"It's not!" Ami retorted heatedly. "Look," Careless from ehxaustion and headache combined, she pointed at one of the 'frost patterns' with her finger. "Here's—"

Too close!

With a disgusting crunch, a web of brightly glowing cracks spread across the surface. A howler sounded under the ceiling. The light in the cave blinked turning red.

"Mana expenditure spiked!" someone frantically shouted from the observation deck. The armored shutters fell with dull clangs.

Khassacht ordered something in a strong commanding voice but the medallion didn't have time to translate.

A thundering flash, and the protective barrier burst with the sound of crushed glass. The portal turned into a roaring, pitch black hole sucking in air. Akane managed to grab Ami around the waist with one hand, almost breaking the girl genius in half. Such was the force pulling them in. Akane managed to hold on.

When the roaring hole swallowed them, the broken handrail was still clutched firmly in her hand.

Ranma watched in horror. Her loved one was falling away into the black abyss, shining brightly from one side as if she was in sunlight.

A moment later the pigtailed girl let go of the rail to dive after them.

She was spun slightly. The sun was shining in her eyes at each turn, disorienting her. Her eyes were stinging awfully. Her blood was singing, pulsing in her extremities like Ranma's whole body suddenly fell asleep. And this terrible, absolute silence in her suddenly popped ears! There was no doubt, they were thrown out into outer space. The stars weren't visible simply because the sun was. She took a look around as best as she could through the stinging in her eyes. Sun was there, Earth wasn't. It wasn't even in sight. What about the closed loop, she wanted to yell. Taking yet another look around she noticed a crescent of the Moon barely visible in the sunlight, the proper size as it should look from Earth.

What the heck is going on!

Akane and Ami disappeared from sight. Blood was humming in her ears, there was sharp pain in her eyes, there was sharp pain in her chest. Her time was running out. The magic! Hastily, she pulled the henshin wand from her collar. It was pulsing with energy ready to give her power. All was needed were four short words.

Ranma raised it: "..."

How does one say "Sol stellar power, Make-up" with lungs full of pure vacuum?

The sunlight was starting to darken.

Akane‼ Ranma thought frantically trying to find a solution but finding none. There was only the eternal silence of the Void around her.

And but one tenacious thought: "I can do it!"

Saotome Ranma never gives up without a fight.

(シーンブレイク)

2008 — December 19, 2013 — May 4, 2014. Translated May 5, 2014

 **Ding!** Tropes unlocked:  
Abuse Is Okay When It Is Female on Male

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— LawOhki  
— Crystal  
— ryuumon  
— Orphus users (34 bugs so far)  
— LawOhki  
— Crystal  
— QSMQEP  
— ryumon  
— Orphus users (32 bugs so far)


	22. Pernicious Influence of Hollywood

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled**

 **Chapter 22,  
Pernicious Influence of Hollywood**

The watch on the orbital station Kappa was stretching by uneventfully, just like a hundred years ago, as it will be a hundred years from now. The controllers' eternal curse of boredom. Both were sleeping in their seats. Someone may see such a watch as a resort but the guys currently on it, passed that stage about twelve hours ago. Right about now they would rather be overhauling drive motors in the dock. Well, they would think that if they weren't sleeping.

The stand-by bridge inside the docking hub, a zero-gee zone, did not have any windows. It was hidden on the side of the airlock opposite the gate, behind many layers of structural support and radiation shielding. Just in case. The former main bridge sporting a real canopy of transparent windows had been abandoned decades ago after one too many accidents with ham-handed pilots driving their rust buckets into places these didn't belong, ham-handed repairmen shutting the shields down while replacing a light bulb and other regrettable accidents.

So the view outside was provided by many screens where the starscape was rotating slowly, two and a half revolutions per minute. The stars were drawn by the computer: the docking port permanently faced the sun so no stars would have been visible anyway. Especially not with such cheap and worn cameras.

The peaceful snoozing was interrupted by a nasty, annoying beeping.

"Shut that beeper, whadda it caterwauling for," a shaggy, big-boned brunette grumbled as he turned to his other side, which was a purely symbolic act in zero-gee. "My ears are growing sore."

"It's on the captain's," replied his partner, a round-faced guy with impressive black eyebrows and a cleanly shaven head. "I don't feel like unbuckling."

The shaggy one opened his eyes to glare back, at the captain's podium towering over the six controllers' workplaces arranged in a horseshoe formation. "Well, all right. It'll prob'ly shut up on its own." Closing his eyes he tried to drift back to sleep.

It didn't work, the annoying beeping kept burrowing into their brains.

"Should I really unbuckle?" the shaggy guy grumbled with discontent when he realized that his chance to sleep on was lost. "Waitaminute... Hadn't we switched all this mumbo jumbo from the captain's station to yours?"

"Not to mine, to station three. But it's offline now." The round-faced guy pointed at a half-disassembled console to the right of him.

"Crap," the shaggy one swore as he started unbuckling the belt holding him in his chair.

"It's Joe's handiwork," the round-faced guy explained vindictively. "He told me he didn't have enough parts for a scanner to chase roaches. Total bullshit!"

"When I catch that dipshit I'll shove these roaches up his asshole!" promised the the shaggy guy. "He can start saving for an artificial rectum!"

"You're such a beast," the round-faced guy snickered.

"I'm not alone. That katsaridaphile got lots of people fed up with him... I'll get help holding him down." Unbuckling, he pushed off with his legs launching himself at the captain's podium. Reaching it he grabbed at it with his left hand to arrest his momentum. He then started working the touchscreen with his right hand brushing away a week worth of message window deposits. "It's got clogged up here... Oopsie! Shit, meet fan!"

"What's wrong?" the round-faced guy asked in alarm.

"This shit here thinks someone has launched some shit at us and that shit is accelerating! Incoming missile, in short."

"No shit?" the former exclaimed in fright. "War is a grandmothers tale from three hundred years ago! Maybe it's just a probe that went haywire?"

"How should I know? It keeps accelerating like an empty scooter. And it glows like a plasma torch! There are no such probes. Here, take a look."

"Oh crap..." the round-faced guy commented as he read data from his screen. "It's really a missile attack! You see, it keeps an elliptic orbit aimed at us, like it doesn't know how much reaction mass is left!"(note 1) Hysteria started to creep into his voice. "Whhat hole did this unfinished-off military-fag crawl from, right on our asses!" He started shuffling menus he had never delved into. "Wait a minute! I recall grandmother telling me about missile defense options down here!"

The sought for menu option was soon found, but it only caused big red letters "Point defense OFFLINE!" to flash across all screens.

"Stop fretting, these lasers got snatched off around twenty years ago when they were chasing the uncontrollably spawning robots in the Cupier belt. Well, remember when a factory glitched and they got a second Third Law in place of the Second Law?"

"Oh crap! And of course they haven't returned these! Who will cover our asses now!" The round-faced guy started digging through menus trying to seize control of some system in the habitable 'donut' of the wheel-like station.

"What'cha doing?"

"Trying to aim the telescope at this thing."

"Yeah, take a good look at the missile before we die... Wait! It's decelerating now, will arrive here at approximately zero speed. So it's a probe, after all! But why the heck does it still follow an elliptic orbit? To send its farewells by slamming into us if it runs out of reaction mass? It wastes a lot of fuel by following such idiotic trajectory!"

"I bet it's not a probe but some joker on a scooter with a booster. If I catch the fucker I'll tear his arms off! Scaring us shitless like that!"

"Here, the telescope is locking on it... Bugger is too bright! It trips the safety. Hmm, optical filters, optical filters... Whoa, holy shit!"

"What is it?" The shaggy one grew wary as he floated up to his partner to look at the screen. "What's with this wobbly blur?"

"It's an angel with wings of fire. A moment, I'll correct the focus."

"What are you... Oh. It's really an angel!" the shaggy guy glanced back at his console. "And he pushes up to six gees with each flap of his wings. So that's why his acceleration is so uneven... Why are you so pale?"

"It... It comes from _there!_ "

"What 'there' do you... Ah." He paled as well. "Please fly by... Oh please, just fly by..."

"He won't, we're doomed. He is going straight for the station. And he is carrying something."

"Holy nukes?"

"Naw... It's like he's holding a man under each arm."

"Sinner earthlings, then?"

"Well, if it's really an angel it should be carrying the righteous."

"So he is what, dragging them to the heavens? Why would he fly here, then? He's closing in."

"To take a third one?"

"He doesn't have enough hands for a third one."

"Weird shit."

They passed several minutes with similar highly intelligent talk. Then a call window started popping insistently on the screen.

"What do they want from us, we'll all die soon anyway!" the round-faced guy shouted, dearly sorry that he had shaved his hair off and thus had nothing to grab at dramatically in despair.

"It's probably Lizzy from the astronomy wants to ask us why the heck did we turn her beloved telescope towards the Sun."

"Oh crap! It's a good thing we'll die soon, else she'd raise such a stench..."

"It's closing!" the shaggy guy interrupted him pointing at the screen of the docking survey camera. The angel was visible there as a bright dot.

Some ten seconds later the newcomer appeared sharply in front of the docking gates, as characteristic for decelerating at five gees.

"Holy cow!" exclaimed the round-faced guy. "It's a gal, Will!"

"I know, Mike! But look at these legs! Ooh!"

"Phew. I don't think a doombringer would have such perfect proportions... Hey, maybe it's girls from the science playing practical jokes on us?" Mike suggested with suspicion as he scratched the back of his shaved head. "My sensors show a kind of shield around her."

"Are you kidding? Where would she hide an engine that allowed her achieve the tons of delta-v she was throwing around with such abandon?" The shaggy guy pointed at another camera showing a side view of the girl with wings of fire. "There's no backpack or the like. Besides, have you ever seen a shield able to hold atmospheric pressure? It's total bullshit, heat losses alone are in megawatt range! The entire bubble woulda shine like the surface of Sun."

"Well, err, maybe she's a robot?"

"Don't speak nonsense, there ain't no such thing as androids."

"In our reality there aren't, but maybe she's from a parallel world?"

"Ah! That's for sure. What do your sensors show? Imagine if these 'wings' of her are a real reactionless drive?"

"Wait a minute." Mike was fiddling with his console. "Well, the magnetoresonance scanner only shows static. She is giving off a little noise in the radio band, there are some weird harmonics. Aha, the shield is definitely there. A perfect ball impenetrable by high-energy particles."

"What about thermals?" Will asked impatiently as he was dangling agitatedly above him.

"Wait, I'm calibrating it. These wings give off mother of all saturations, they are some six thousands... Here it is. Everything the filter could clear, anyway. All three girls are glowing uniformly at three hundred plus."

"The body temperature, in short. So the one with the wings isn't a robot. A robot would have had a much higher contrast in thermals."

"Wait, what is she doing?"

"Knocking at the airlock gate with her foot. Cuz her arms are full, you know."

"I won't ask how is she keeping herself from rebounding away, that's a silly question. But what should we do now?"

"Well, first we report to the captain. Then we wait until he deals with his manly hangover—"

"Open the airlock, now!" a woman's voice barked from behind them. Both the watchmen started, then shrunk their heads into their shoulders. "And the scooter landing pad!"

"But ma'am, the standard procedure—"

"Shove it. What should you have done according the standard procedure? Can you recite it by memory? Or should I report what you two yahoos were doing with the telescope?"

Mike shuddered. Will was trying his best to pretend he was transparent.

"Negative, ma'am! At once, ma'am!"

The airlock gate shuddered. Huge teeth painted yellow and black began parting. The girl with wings of fire slid inside sideways as soon as the opening was wide enough. The internal cameras showed her banking graciously like a bird to dive into one of the smaller gates lining the walls, following the track of landing lights toward the scooter landing pad.

(シーンブレイク)

In all scenes mixing Japanese and English, English is marked with _italic_.

(シーンブレイク)

" _They will... Will they be all right?_ " Sailor Sol asked with worry, straining her English.

" _Don't distract me,_ " the woman doctor rebuffed the redhead as she loaded the unconscious Ami into a thick white capsule and closed the lid. Well, Ranma thought she was a doctor, judging by the large red cross on the girl's jumpsuit.

It all had happened so fast, it was a good thing this station happened to be nearby. She didn't even take a good look around. Sol cast a worried glance at Akane who was lying on a stretcher. The raven-haired girl remained unconscious, her face and open skin looking like she went several rounds against a beehive. But her breathing and pulse were stable. Unlike Ami, she wasn't bleeding from her mouth with each breath. No, Sol was sure her wife would be fine even as she was feeling bad for her. Two or three minutes in vacuum won't kill a trained martial artist. But Ami, on the other hand...

The capsule was humming for a long time until some numbers and graphs started appearing on the screens. These were telling Sol nothing. Then, finally, something she could understand: an outline of Ami's body painted with yellow and red spots. Sol gulped nervously. These were all minor thing, surely curable by the Senshi magic. But the main red spot, shaped like Ami's entire lungs...

" _Will she live?_ " Sol asked again, forcefully.

The doctor turned to face her with an irritated sigh. Then she saw that the other girl won't let her be, so she replied: " _She will. I estimate her condition as blah blah blah severe as blah blah blah and blah blah blah due to blah blah blah because her blah blah blah..._ "

Sol stopped listening, overwhelmed with relief. A good news at last. But this English is starting to get under my skin, she thought. To invest so much boring effort first at school, then at college, only to find you can barely understand half the words when you really need it. Or were these just specific medical words they don't teach at school?

Akane groaned trying to open her tightly shut eyes. It worked at the second attempt. The doctor began fussing around her with some sort of hand-held device.

"Where are we?" Akane croaked. "Ow..."

"Don't worry." Sol put a hand on her shoulder. "You will be fine. This is some sort of space station, I carried you both here."

The doctor was listening to their speech incomprehendingly. Then the capsule with Ami inside started beeping, so she shifted all her attention there.

"We... landed in open space?" Akane rubbed at her throat. "But then— Ami!" She sat up with a jerk, looking around in panic.

" _Don't get up._ " The doctor turned to her. " _You have a severe decompression trauma, I will get to you as soon as I finish with the patient here... What is her name?_ "

"Ami." Akane had a coughing fit as she tried to stand up. Sol steadied her gently. "Mizu... _Ami Mizuno. How bad is it? Will she be all right?_ "

"Don't distract the doctor,"S ol said. "Look, she's busy, she doesn't have time to answer." She pointed at the screen. "All I know she has been scanned and this thing shows her lungs in red. But the doctor here says she'll live. Com'on, transform already."

" _You shouldn't be standing up!_ ·The doctor turned to Akane sharply, her blond ponytail whipping around. There was worry in her voice, mixed with frustration at the patient who seemed intent on harming herself.

Akane rummaged in her collar to pull out her henshin wand. "I hope my tiny asteroid exists in this world. Iris prism power, Make-up!"

The doctor froze in awe when Akane's beige track suit dissolved in streamers of rainbow light washing over the short-haired girl and refracting around her in kaleidoscopic patterns. The iridescent streams twirled hugging her and becoming a sailor suit with a short blue skirt. The rainbowy light then gathered at her chest solidifying into an iridescent gem in the center of the bow.

"Ahh, much better," Sailor Iris breathed out feeling the transformation wash away soreness and stiffness. She bent several times left and right at the waist, limbering up.

" _Amazing!_ " the doctor squealed jumping up to her with her hand-held device and moving it over Iris' body. " _Such incredibly advanced technology, the damage is simply disappearing! What is it, nanomachines?_ "

" _It is magic,_ " Sol told her trying to calm her down.

" _Magic? It couldn't be!_ " The doctor disagreed with her. " _Any magic is just a sufficiently advanced technology!_ "

"Etooo, _let ask Ami..._ " suggested Iris. " _She can better... say more._ "

" _How soon will she be able to speak?_ " Sol asked the doctor.

The blond woman paused in indecision, then turned to the screens. " _In usual circumstances I'd demand minimum a week for blah blah blah... But if you guarantee that your supertechnology will work I can use blah blah blah stimulators... But know that that will put severe stress on her system._ "

" _Will work,_ " Sol reassured her. " _She needs to_ ·transform."

" _All right._ " The woman made a couple gestures across the touch panel. The capsule opened and the stretcher holding the unconscious Ami protracted out. Taking something akin to a pistol from a holder on the console, the doctor fiddled with it, then pressed it against Ami's shoulder right through the clothing, all the while muttering something about recklessness. Pop!

For a few seconds, Ami remained motionless. Only the machines were beeping and the numbers growing. Then she jerked wheezing and coughing up blood. Sailor Iris held her carefully by the shoulders helping her to sit up. Then she pulled Ami's henshin wand from her collar by its cord and pulled it off of her, ruffling her hair. She then put it in her hand. "Come on, Ami-chan. You can do this."

"Whu... koff... what..." Ami had an another coughing fit, covering her face with her hand. She then stared, her eyes watery, at the red droplets on the lab coat sleeve.

"Come on, transform. You have to heal."

Ami raised the wand in her unsteady hand. "Mer... koffry khrystal power, Make-up!"

Iris was hit with a powerful wave of icy freshness. Sighing in relief, Mercury sagged back to the stretcher to lie on her back. The doctor was fiddling with her scanner aah'ing and ooh'ing in awe.

Sol finally could take a look around. On one hand, after the magical adventures, the race across parallel worlds and everything else, a mere space station looked mundane. On the other hand, it was the first time they got to a place that looked like sci-fi films about the future. It was like a materialized image of how it would have been without the intervention of neo-Serenity. Although... It was a thousand years until Crystal Tokyo, and no one knew the way the home world had to follow to get there. Ranma himself had never met neo-Serenity but he had a suspicion that the Queen bullshitted her guests from the past. Particularly about the so called 'great freeze'. Bringing a new world order never goes peacefully. And the Pink Spore just confirmed that with her half words and avoiding certain topics...

The med-bay looked utilitarian. Strange machines of unknown use were there, but were all encased in smooth frames with a minimum of protruding parts. The floor consisted of something akin to rubber, with darker beaten paths standing out prominently. The matte walls of a sandy color were only interrupted with small vent grates. The walls were covered with the same rubber, worn at some corners showing silvery metal. The light panels on the ceiling... Well, their innards may be super high-tech, but outwardly these things won't change in ten thousand years.

"Did you catch everything?" Iris asked with worry. "You saved us, but maybe the tokens—"

"Sheesh, the tokens are all right," Sol reassured her demonstrating the bag dangling behind her back under the square flap of the sailor collar. "And both medallions too. But both are silent. These buggers don't want to translate English. I even— Oopsie." She stared at her henshin wand: it was discolored and looked like a cheap plastic toy.

"What's wrong?" Iris grew worried. She had already noticed the changes in Sol's seifuku. But she was unsure of their meaning.

"Hm. So Ami was right. These really are training aids."

The wand in her hand was graying rapidly, gaining the texture of rough sandstone. Then it cracked all over and crumbled to dust.

"Ranma!" Iris cried out in alarm.

"Don't worry, I just outgrew it. Well... There was no air so I couldn't say the transformation phrase. Well, I just transformed like that... On sheer willpower. By the way, I got a cool new ability!" She couldn't help bragging. "I can fly now!"

"Will you be able to detransform?" Iris asked with a mix of relief and worry. And, maybe, envy: the Soldier of the Sun's costume underwent notable changes. Instead of a white skirt with a double edging there were three layered skirts now: the shortest bright scarlet, the middle red and the longest of them crimson. The decorative belt running above it was now white instead of crimson. The bows, formerly crimson, became white with double skirting of scarlet and crimson. The sandals were white as well, except the soles and the top straps hugging the calves, which remained crimson. The white gloves were now extending above the golden bracers reaching mid-shoulder where they ended with thick crimson rings.

Instead of replying, Sailor Sol dropped her transformation. She became Ranma instantly: the beige track suit just appeared, without the traditional one second-long naked pause. Then there was a fleeting wave of sparks and she was Eternal Sailor Sol again.

"Cool!" Iris commented with a hint of envy, sincerely glad for her husband. "By the way! Did you notice it yet? Your hair is red again!"

"Really?" Sol pulled the end of her pigtail up to her eyes. "Well... Just as I thought," she said failing at sounding nonchalant. The relief in her voice was palpable.

Iris smiled. Then she turned serious: "Where are we? Why haven't we landed on Earth but in open space?"

"There's something wrong," replied Sol. "I had no time to figure it out. It feels like Earth is there, at its proper place, but at the same time it isn't there. The Moon is fine, by the way. It orbits the Earth that isn't there."

"How could that be? We have to ask the locals!"

"We'll ask them as soon as Mercury wakes up," Sol reassured her. "Between the two of us, our English is not good enough... The doctor was telling me something about Ami's health, but I totally didn't get it."

" _A couple minutes._ " Mercury said quietly. Her breathing was raspy and labored. "It seems the healing magic has some trouble working here... Phkoff... Pity my computer is back at home..."

The door slid aside with a hiss. A harsh looking brunette with a very short haircut strode in. She stopped raising a brow at the sight of three girls in sailor suits, over one of which the doctor was fussing with gasps of awe.

" _As I understand, the contact went successfully?_ " she inquired in a politely neutral voice.

The doctor jumped in surprise. " _Miss Lizbeth! We are... You can't possibly imagine..._ "

" _Easy, Becky._ " The other woman stopped her with a gesture. " _Compose yourself._ "

Iris bowed politely: " _Glad to meet you. I am Sailor Iris... Akane Tendou._ "

" _Sailor Sol, Saotome Ranma._ "

" _Elizabeth Eismann,_ " the brunette offered in turn, offering a hand. " _Boss of the science division or what could pass as one in this hive of loons and yahoos called Station Kappa._ " On the chest and back of her jumpsuit there were symbols of an eye inscribed into a circle.

" _Pleasure is mine._ " Iris shook the hand carefully. This young woman was a head taller than her.

Mercury began rising from her stretcher.

" _The healing is not complete!_ " the doctor, Becky as they knew now, reminded her worriedly.

" _Magic will have no trouble healing me as I'm up and about,_ " Mercury reassured her. " _Unfortunately, we have to hurry._ " She turned to Elizabeth. " _Ami Mizuno, Sailor Mercury._ "

" _Sailor Mercury?_ " Elizabet asked again. " _Magic?_ "

" _In this case 'Sailor' means... Approximately, 'magical warrior-protector',_ " she explained. " _It matching the English word 'sailor' is a side effect of a... particular spiritual resonance. Mercury is just the name of the planet that serves as source of my power._ "

" _And again they are talking about magic!_ " injected Becky.

" _The difference between magic and technology only seems insignificant at the first glance,_ " Mercury replied. " _While it is in fact fundamental. I would gladly discuss this, but let's find out our further course first._ "

" _It's such a pity you are in a hurry._ " Becky shook her head ruefully.

" _It can't be helped,_ " Mercury said. " _Our rescue mission can't wait._ " She opened a medallion and started tapping the keys.

" _But your computers look so much like ours!_ " Elizabeth exclaimed as she tried to look at the screen over her shoulder. " _This feels at odds with your other off-the-charts technologies._ "

" _It's not our technology,_ " Mercury explained briefly as she continued working. " _It's a part of the Ahs system._ "

" _Ahs!_ " exclaimed Elizabeth. " _That horrible, mind-blowing entity! You can't possibly imagine how many scientists lost their minds trying to understand it..._ "

" _You are just envious of the captain,_ " Becky said in an attempt to calm her down. " _He is the only one who dealt with it but didn't lose his mind._ "

" _There's nothing to lose._ " Elizabeth snorted scornfully. She then turned back to the three sailor-suited girls: " _And you? How do you cope?_ "

Mercury didn't reply, busy with the medallion.

" _We do not try to understand,_ " Sailor Sol replied. " _We are using blindly._ "

" _There are... several rules,_ " Iris added. " _We can follow them._ "

Both weren't too bad at English, but understanding what the locals said required some effort. So they were letting Mercury do all the talking.

"Everything is well," she said as she finished her manipulations. "The loop is closed, the nav-points are there. But there is no token in this world and no transport node. I suppose we, once again, will have to find someone able to open a further portal."

" _Excuse me?_ " Elizabeth asked.

" _The time manipulating control circuit reports an existing path to our goal,_ " Mercury gave her an abbreviated translation. " _Don't ask how. This is also a part of Ahs we use like a black box. We simply follow the nav-points._ " She tapped some keys. " _The closest point we have to visit is 125 meters along the circumference of the station, five meters below this level._ " She pointed in that direction.

" _Isn't that where—_ " Becky began guesstimating something.

" _I know,_ " Elizabeth interrupted her. Both cringed. " _That would be the lair of Minnie May, our... historian, if you could call her that._ "

The five of them walked out into a corridor. The Senshi took a look around. The corridor was curving upwards accenting the point that they were inside a rotating torus. Square in cross-section, it was some five meters wide, coated with the same rubber-like material. The walls were the same sandy color, with a darker floor. But the floor here was all worn and scuffed, lighter patches forming a chaotic pattern.

" _Follow me, please_ " Elizabeth called them as she headed to an elevator, away from their destination. There were two elevators: a small one with a narrow door and a cargo one, its doors taking the entire wall height. Eying the five of them critically the brunette called the cargo elevator.

The huge doors slid to the sides with a hiss. A man emerged from the spacious cabin, his jumpsuit bearing the emblem of a wrench. He was herding a gaggle of stocky, multi-armed robots in front of him waving the remote like he was herding geese.

Their little wheels squeaking, the metallic hybrids of a vacuum cleaner and octopus tried to go around the girls. This resulted in a traffic jam, with robots getting in each others way, shuffling around and beeping.

" _Get into da line, yer bloody braindead piles o' junk!_ " the man berated them as he manipulated his remote. The robots beeped at once and stopped. The girls stepped aside to let them pass. One of the awkward machines rolled forward and away along the corridor. The others trailed after it in a line.

The robot herder noticed the sailor-suited girls and stared at them, his jaw hanging agape. The Senshi hurried into the elevator. The two guides entered after them.

" _It is impolite to stare like that, especially at guests,_ " Becky reminded the man as she shielded the Senshi with her body. The technician mumbled some sheepish excuse and left after his charges.

" _I thought robots would be more..._ " Sol fell silent searching for a suitable English word while the huge doors were slowly closing and sealing.

" _More smart?_ " Elizabeth asked. " _But attaining a true artificial intelligence is impossible at our current level of technology. The proof had been deduced a long time ago._ "

" _As unattainable as human-like robots,_ " Becky added. " _Androids and such are non-scientific retro-fantasy._ "

Mercury cast a suspicious glance at them. But no, both seemed sincere.

"What?" the redhead whispered quietly in her native language: she didn't miss that glance.

"Something doesn't add up here," the girl genius replied. "We have... back at home, we already have first androids. Crude and primitive, certainly, but our Earth is a century or more behind the locals."

The elevator descended quickly. Sol and Iris felt an unexpected tug to the side.

" _It's Coriolis force,_ " Mercury explained briefly.

Down there there was a very alike corridor, just less scuffed.

" _What is wrong with Earth?_ " Sol tried to ask while they were walking to their destination. " _It is there... And it is not._ "

" _That's..._ " Elizabeth looked awkward. " _That's a long story. Let Millicent tell you._ "

At this moment they walked up to a door with a gaudy sign flashing above with multicolored lights. It read " _MINNIE MAY'S Cultural Heritage Corner_ ".

" _Here,_ " Becky said shuffling her feet. " _Ask your questions inside._ "

Sol cast a suspicious side glance at the two women. Did they have a pet tiger working on that heritage or what? She knocked.

" _You do it like this._ " Elizabeth flicked her finger across a touch panel beside the door. It changed its color from gray to yellow. Then the door slid aside with a hiss.

" _Come in, I'm waiting for you!_ " a woman's voice reached from inside. There was a small airlock beyond the door.

The three Senshi entered. Sol and Iris didn't miss the fact that both their guides chose to stay outside. They moved surreptitiously forward to shield Mercury.

The outer door closed. A couple seconds later the inner one opened.

" _Welcome!_ " a woman in her mid-twenties greeted them, her wavy black hair falling below her shoulders. She rose from behind a table with a huge monitor on it, the screen not visible from the door. Her jumpsuit, similar to any others seen on this station so far, had an emblem of a half-opened book.

" _Hello!_ " Iris bowed politely. " _We—_ ·Gah!" noticing the posters on the walls, she choke on her greeting.

Sol had already swept the room with her eyes. It was nigh empty, but the poster-covered walls had hints of closed shelves and a poorly concealed door. She then focused on the content of the posters. She boggled.

" _Glad to meet you, I'm Ami Mizuno,_ " Mercury offered while carefully not looking at the walls.

" _Minnie May._ " The room owner offered her hand.

Mercury shook it awkwardly. " _We... are guests from a parallel universe. We have arrived here intent on disembarking on Earth, but there was an unfortunate incident—_ "

" _How could it be,_ " Sol injected after she managed to tear her eyes away from the posters, " _that Earth... is there but is not there?_ "

" _It's a very, very tragic story,_ " Minnie replied with overblown dramatism. " _If you have time—_ "

" _We have not!_ " Iris interrupted her with irritation. Living... and having guests in a room where every wall is covered with posters from the anime and manga... With beautiful young men, often not exactly dressed, being... tender to each other? Akane's anti-pervert senses were blaring.

" _All right,_ " the host agreed, her disappointment clear. " _The short version, then. The humankind was up and about, settling the solar system, when a terrible catastrophe destroyed the Homeworld. Luckily for us, the self-replicating robot factories allowed those few outside the Jupiter orbit to survive. Now the humankind is building a new home among asteroids while hoarding the cultural heritage of our forefathers. The progress, alas, had slowed to a crawl: most resources go for keeping out tech level from slipping. That would be fatal._ "

" _Destroyed?_ " Sol asked. " _Blew up? But the Moon is in its place. That means, Earth continues pulling.. attracting it? I do not understand._ "

" _Careless experimenting on an unknown Ahs-construct,_ " Minnie May told them, her voice full of tragism, " _led to a resonance of some sort. The scientists still can't figure it out. Something about gravity pulsating. As a result, Earth had collapsed and is now a... black hole, forgive me for such a vulgar term._ "

" _You mean..._ " Mercury calculated something silently. " _The entire mass of the planet had been compressed to a radius of nine millimeters? How much energy do you need for that?_ "

"So that's why it's there but it isn't!" Sol exclaimed with relief. "And here I was wracking my brain!"

"Ranma," Iris reminded her quietly. "Six billion people died there."

" _I don't know about energy,_ " Minnie admited, " _But the burst of hard radiation and gravitational waves was so strong that all stations and colonies inside the Jupiter orbit had been simply shredded. The Moon, if you look closely, is still wobbling in its orbit bleeding magma from time to time..._ " She straightened up. " _Our station Kappa was built in orbit around the former Earth as a monument... As a center of keeping the spiritual heritage._ " She gestured around. The effect wasn't what she was aiming for. " _Well, and as a home for those scientists who try to figure out what the hell had happened that day._ "

" _What sort of Ahs-construct was that,_ " Mercury wondered. She felt a chill remembering what monstrous energies were at work to keep their medallions running.

" _Oh, then you have to ask the captain,_ " the wavy-haired woman replied. " _He can... explain everything better than anybody. It was him, after all, who provided the eggheads with that artifact for the study that ended so... awkwardly._ "

" _Thank you,_ " Mercury said. " _I would be glad to stay and discuss..._ "

Iris moved surreptitiously to peek at the screen of the monitor. Her ears turning red, her eye started twitching. "Ranma—" Turning to the redhead she found her engrossed in examining the wall posters. " _Excuse me, we have to go!_ " Grabbing the Mercury, who was still saying her goodbyes, with one hand and Sol with the other hand she practically dragged them to the airlock. The door was closing with all the speed of an overfed turtle!

" _Bye-bye! It was nice to chat with real Japanese. Pity you are all girls!_ " Minnie's voice reached through the crack.

Finally, they were outside. Iris let out a breath of relief.

" _A funny woman,_ " Sol noted. " _Her name me... reminds me of something._ "

" _Actually, her real name is Millicent Mayflower,_ " Elizabeth noted. " _Which is kind of a part of the historical heritage too. But she got engrossed in, ahem, oriental aspects. She is bothering our flyboys to rename scooters into 'Valkyries'._ "

" _At times, she attempts to sing,_ " Becky added with a shudder. " _Unfortunately, her ear for music or a lack thereof leaves much to desire._ "

" _The next nav-point,_ " Mercury changed the topic hastily as she closed the medallion, " _is near the opposite side of the ring, close to its side wall and is... two levels higher._ "

" _I bet that's the captain's den,_ " Becky said.

" _Minn... Millicent sent us to him,_ " Mercury affirmed.

" _Well, it would be silly to hope you'd avoid him,_ " Elizabeth noted philosophically. " _Shall we?_ "

They went down the corridor. Luckily, it was empty.

" _If you allow me,_ " Becky started the conversation, " _I'd like to go back to our discussion about your, ahem, 'magic'._ "

" _As I said before,_ " Ami began explaining, " _at a superficial look it's easy to mistake magic for a sufficiently advanced technology. The fundamental difference here is in the principles of reaching the goal. At the level of extreme simplifying it, err, may be called 'retrograde buildup'._ "

" _Excuse me?_ "

" _Technology... works on the principle of study and formalization of physical laws that is followed by building a system based on physical effects, building up upwards from simple to complex. While magic starts from the end result formulated at the highest level of abstraction, with a system of corrections to the physical laws then building up downwards, from complex to simple._ "

" _Corrections to physical laws?！_ _You probably mean some higher order laws we haven't discovered yet?_ "

" _Technically, you could formulate it like that,_ " Mercury corrected her. " _But that would be a very rough approximation. True understanding of magic is not possible without accepting the existence of the spiritual-material dualism._ "

" _But isn't that a higher abstraction level of the physical laws?_ " Becky injected impatiently.

" _No. The physical laws... The further they go, the deeper down they get, to more and more basic building blocks of the material side of the universe. The analogy with the wave-particle dualism is quite direct. What I call the... fabric of universe does show both material and spiritual properties, depending on conditions. From what I know, formulating a unified theory that would incorporate both these natures is well beyond human level._ "

" _But then... The laws of interaction..._ "

" _If you try to formalize these without breaking your mind, then the something that seems like laws of interaction would look as creating new... additional physical laws. That will manifest in deviations of random distributions, completely undetectable on the quantum level. The source of these additional laws is the spiritual component of the living beings. Thus we come to formalizing the existence of souls._ "

" _You mean, magic is creating additional physical laws by spirits?_ " Becky asked, taken aback. " _I must admit this... is hard to swallow from the materialistic standpoint._ "

" _I understand, this is not easy for you,_ " Mercury agreed as she lowered her eyes at her white-glowed hand. She closed her fist, then relaxed it. " _It wasn't easy for me to learn the objective reality that had been opened for me. But you can't run from the facts. The simplest kind of... additional laws is the correcting factor applied for the Newton's second law for forces acting across the surface of my body. It results in me affecting the outside world as if I was ten times stronger than I am... And accordingly, the external forces are lessened for a magnitude._ "

" _And the source of additional energy?_ " Elizabeth joined the conversation. " _For the extra work produced?_ "

" _There's no such source,_ " Mercury explained. " _The conservation laws are the first victims of magic. Generating and absorbing energy, even creating matter from nothing - these do, of course, consume some... mana, if you could generalize it so roughly. But this... substance has nothing to do with the classical energy._ "

Sailor Sol walking beside them had lost the track of the conversation long ago as it ascended far beyond her knowledge of English. But her face was suspiciously satisfied, as Iris noticed. Despite the grim news of the destroyed Earth.

The rainbow warrior wavered in indecision for a long time as she watched the redhead. But finally she addressed the other girl with a mix of embarrassment and sincere worry: "Why were you, uh, back when we were at that pervert's, why were you staring at her smut posters?"

Sol grew embarrassed as well: "Well, I kinda.., I wanted to make sure."

"Make sure what?"

"Well, that I'm not attracted to men and all that," Sol explained.

Iris gasped.

"Well, after Ahta, I was thinking, what if my mind is clouded or stuff? What if that was the female side taking over?"

"Ranma," Iris said, "This so called 'female side' isn't some sickness. It doesn't work that way."

"Yeah, but I hadn't gotten mine in an entirely natural way," the redhead reminded her. "And in this multiverse many things about magic are wrong. So I thought, maybe my curse glitched and I'm starting to turn into a girl in my mind as well?"

"I hope not," Iris only could reply, beside herself with worry. She had waved that strange event away, shifting the unpleasant question to the back of her mind. But what it was something serious and long-standing?

"What happened?" Ami asked turning away from her conversation with Elizabeth. "Did you say something about the curse malfunctioning?"

"Well, it's... Don't worry, it's nothing," Ranma tried to dodge.

"I don't think such things could be called nothing!" Ami said indignantly. "I can see that it is, probably, awkward. But I ask you dearly: tell me what's wrong!"

Stuttering with embarrassment, interrupting each other, Sol and Iris told her the whole story of Ranma's sudden attraction to Ahta. Or, more like, Mercury pulled that story out of them with effort.

"..well, then we uh... fought against the creep together and h..she kind of... In short, the guy... girl... was like a buddy after that. And, I think, there was nothing of the sorts any more," Sol finished.

"So you have difficulty identifying Ahta's gender," Mercury summed up.

"Well, he... she... A girl cursed to turn into a guy," Sol replied. "Of course I can't help but sympathize. It's important for me, you know, that friends keep considering me a guy."

"It's clear then," Ami concluded. "You simply confused yourself, there's no reason to worry. That was a singular event."

"No reason?" Akane was indignant. "It seems to me there is one!"

"Well, kinda," Sol dittoed.

"I didn't want to touch this," Ami said with a sigh. "But as you insist... While studying the Jusenkyou curse I had discovered that the curse... It doesn't modify the body but kind of swaps it with another one retroactively. That, by the way, is why it doesn't work in Ahs: it employs some temporal sleight-of-hand. At this 'swap' the higher personality functions and the memory are transferred into a new brain. Or, more precisely, a new brain is created using the matrix of the original one. But as you can surmise, this process is not complete. Of the motor functions and trained reflexes, only those compatible with the new body are copied. Otherwise Shampoo the cat wouldn't be able to run on all fours and Mousse the duck couldn't fly."

"But I have no trouble fighting in my cursed form!" Sol objected. "I only had to adjust a little in the beginning."

"Because in your case it's a human to human transfer," Mercury explained. "Admit it, the differences between a girl and a boy aren't so big in relation to the body structure. Bot the cat and the duck are losing most of their skill. They can't use martial arts and are nigh unable to use ki."

"And P-chan can't do Shishi Hokou dan!" Iris remembered.

"The duck can throw knives," Sol corrected. "While Pops doesn't even seem to notice. But I think you're right. These are more like exceptions to the rule. That technique of Mousse is... screwy. And Pops got experience. But how does this relate to that... gay horror with Ahta? I'm still shivering at the memories."

"Let's start with the fact," Ami continued her lecture, "that the brain created by the curse is the brain of the creature that had served a template for the cursed form. It just gets adjusted for the personality matrix and memories of a human. Of course the influence of the magic and the spirit is significant. But both the structure of the brain and the thought pattern still change."

"You mean," Sol asked, her voice wavering, "it's as bad as I was afraid it is?"

Iris put her hand on the redhead's shoulder.

"I noticed a long time ago," Sol continued. "When Shampoo was in her cursed form, she acted so stupid at times... It's because the Earth... squirrels have a smaller brain, right? So she noticeably dumbs down when she transforms?"

"Indeed," Mercury confirmed. "That is what happens. She starts thinking like a cat with human memory and personality but with cat reflexes."

"And these..." Sol gulped. "These reflexes took me over, didn't they?"

"Only because you allowed them to!" Mercury reassured her urgently. "Even as your brain is mostly female, and your reflexes are completely female, your will is strong enough to remain who you are... Who you want to be."

"And Ahta—"

"You made yourself perceive him as a girl, as someone of opposite gender. And when the instincts began notifying you insistently about the fact that he is an attractive member of the opposite gender..."

"These added with each other!" Sol exclaimed with relief. "Of course! The instincts are brainless, there's mind for doing the thinking... And it went so far because... By the way, why did it go so far?"

"You were unable to accept these signals on the conscious level," Mercury explained. "The very idea was so alien to your mind that you couldn't understand what was happening to you and let the instincts lead you little by little, unlike your usual self."

"That's right!" Sol laughed. "Just like a classical moe-blob that was proposed to for the first time. I even acted the part! Ha-ha!"

"You pervert," Iris concluded with relief. "Your wife is sitting beside you and you're scoping on others."

"You are completely safe," Mercury added. "Even if you meet another girl turned guy."

At that, their luck ran out. They met a couple guys walking in opposite direction. One had the emblem of a wrench, the other - of a rocket. Despite Elizabeth glaring daggers at them, the two trailed the delegation exchanging whispered remarks. Then more joined them appearing from somewhere, and more again, including two girls with haircuts like Nabiki's.

"It seems, the law of rumour propagation is the same wherever you are," Sol noted philosophically, "be it on Earth or in space." She sighed. "And again I am in the circus camel role."

"We," Iris corrected her.

Suddenly, a huge cockroach ran out of one of the small vents along the floor!

Iris shrieked, more from disgust that from fright, as she jumped up to to the ceiling.

The rat-sized insect froze twitching its long antennae.

"Disgusting!" Iris exclaimed as she stretched one leg forward, intent on landing on the vile thing as the Coriolis force had moved her slightly forward anyway.

" _Stop!_ " Elisabeth shouted in panic. " _Don't!_ "

" _You'll lose your foot!_ " the crowd of onlookers chorused.

" _What cockroach is it?_ " Iris asked as she pushed off a wall to land far beyond the insect.

Sol squinted suspiciously as she watched the cockroach. It crawled slowly to the center of the corridor twitching its antennae as if sniffing around.

" _This is... also part of our cultural heritage,_ " Elizabeth admitted with embarrassment. " _First, do you know Ridley Scott's film 'Alien'?_ "

" _We know,_ " Sol confirmed. " _Good horror._ "

" _Good,_ " Elizabeth continued. " _One of our... scientists, for the lack of a better word, tried to recreate that thing in reality. To our luck, he was only partly successful. His colleagues organized a fatal accident for him while he was still at the stage of cockroaches with acid blood._ "

" _It's not acid,_ ·Becky interrupted her, " _but a tricky mix of free radicals packed in fullerens... But that doesn't change the outcome. Crush one and it'll dissolve your foot._ "

Iris shivered unvoluntarily and shifted that foot back.

" _Unfortunately,_ " Elisabeth finished, " _they are hardy like roaches and spawn like roaches. Fortunately, they grow very slowly: accumulating this not-acid requires lots of energy._ "

" _Unfortunately,_ " Becky added, " _the same fulleren-radical nanofoam is used by their system as a very efficient battery. Even venting bulkhead sections wouldn't help as the parasites can survive for several days in hard vacuum._ "

" _And feed on some kinds of decorative plastics._ "

" _Then you will not be against..._ " Sol proposed as she made a point of lighting a small ball of solar plasma in her hand.

The crowd beyond them broke out in gasps of awe and alarm. It seems someone was mentioning something about superheroes.

Stealing her thunder, a flexible trunk slid from one of the walls. Sol jumped back dodging a snowy stream of carbon dioxide.

" _No open flame, please,_ " Elizabeth said.

Startled, the cockroach sped away from them, heading towards Iris.

" _All right._ " Tearing a small duct grill that was hanging on one screw Sol launched it at the insect with deadly precision.

The cockroach burst as if it was pressurized. Blackish green ichor splashed around bubbling and hissing, burning sores in the rubber-like surface of the floor. A sharp chemical stench wafted through the air. An alarm grunted sharply from the ceiling and the vents started emitting a strained humming, sucking the vile stuff in. The former cockroach was bubbling and smoking fiercer and fiercer.

" _It... Is it burning?_ " Sol asked sniffing the air.

" _Like a shorted chemical battery,_ " Elizabeth confirmed. " _Experiences runaway heating._ "

The hissing died down soon, though. the impressive hole burned in the floor was only smoking slightly. Becky walked up to it, lpeered into the hole at the darkness and cross-beams, then casually swept the half-eaten vent grate to a wall with her foot. " _Also these things love crawling into the most inaccessible corners between power cables and dying there from natural causes, with the same fireworks. The repairmen swear with all their might. One even went as far as declaring a war on them._ "

" _Joe Barker,_ " Elizabeth noted. " _But that looks more like protecting the population than war. He lost his mind. Shall we go?_ "

Akane glanced around plotfully, then whispered into Ranma's ear: "It looks to me they are all nuts on this station!"

"You have just noticed?" the redhead tittered.

"Well..." Iris paused to think. "Yeah... This place feels like back home."

(シーンブレイク)

By squeezing all five into a passrnger elevator, the young women got rid of the trail of onlookers for a time. They rode it two levels up, emerging in a tall room with a high, sloped ceiling. Its bottom part was latticed, with darkness in the gaps. Looking closely Sol realized it was just a window. Squinting she could even see some of the brightest stars.

" _Captain Perk dwells here,_ " Becky proclaimed in an ominous tone more suitable for a warning about dragon's lair.

" _After Mi..llicent I won't be scared by anything,_ " Sol replied arrogantly.

"Stop asking for it!" Iris hissed elbowing her in the ribs.

" _It's worth mentioning,_ " Elizabeth injected, " _that he is, like you, an outsider from a parallel world. His world's technology is much more advanced than ours._ "

There was a double door opposite the elevator. Its wings swung open soundlessly.

" _You may enter,_ " a manly baritone sounded.

The Senshi entered a darkened hall with caution. The ceiling and the back wall were a lattice made up of glass panels separated by thin beams. A half-full Moon sliding across the view, the panorama was rotating at a medium pace.

" _To what do I owe the honor, young ladies?_ " The captain turned out to be an imposing man with a willed jawline and piercing steely gray eyes. " _Oooh, you are like orchids bringing solace into the gray boredom of this steel box!_ " He turned his head theatrically allowing them to see the beautifully done wave of chestnut hair rising above the high forehead of a thinker.

Also, he was loud. As if he wasn't speaking but making a speech from a podium.

"Izzat you, Kuno?" Sol blurted.

" _Excuse me?_ " the captain asked, a tad less boisterously, displaying that he was not familiar with Japanese.

" _Is nothing,_ " Sol replied rubbing her ribs that had suffered the elbow of Iris again.

" _But wouldn't it be proper to introdude myself first?_ " he proclaimed offering his hand. " _Captain Perk at your service, a humble pioneer from the brotherhood of Interspace Rocketeers._ "

"Deja Vu," Sol commented quietly.

" _Pleased to meet you,_ " Iris shook his hand politely as she was growing accustomed to the gesture. " _Akane Tendou._ " She refrained from adding 'Sailor Iris' to make things feel less official.

" _Ranma Saotome,_ " the redhead offered reluctantly.

Mercury opened the medallion to peek at the screen. No, the next nav-point wasn't there yet. So they had to get this poser to talk? She offered in turn: " _Ami Mizuno. You see, the three of us are from a different world as well. Would you tell us more about the rocketeers?_ "

The captain perked up, his eyes glinting. Sol cringed foreseeing an ear-wiltingly pompous speech. He didn't fail her expectations: " _Oh, the Interspace Rocketeers are a closely knit brotherhood of heroic pioneers exploring something even more dangerous than the depths of space! On our Starships we break through the barriers of space and time to reach other universes. The power of science and the triumphing human intellect gave us a tool to bring the light of knowledge through the inter-universal barriers!_ "

" _All heroes_?" Sol asked in a doubtful voice. She was dearly sorry she couldn't quip properly. Bloody English, it's worse than fighting with both your arms and legs tied!

" _Well,_ " Perk admitted reluctantly, " _there are some individuals who upload their mind to a crystal installed in an artificial body — while their own remains safely at home, in suspended animation._ "

Mercury glanced at the screen. No, not yet. " _But what about you? What is your goal here, if you excuse my curiosity?_ "

The captain deflated visibly. " _Unfortunately, yours truly is... constrained in this world, due to purely technical reasons—_ "

"So why should that... _What is our interest?_ " Sol interrupted him. " _We need to go to the next parallel world._ "

" _Oh, in that case you asked the right person, young ladies!_ " Perk exclaimed happily. " _Because the true purpose of this station, the reason for its existence, is reclaimation of the Heritage!_ " The capital letters could practically be heard in his speech.

" _What relation does the culture have?_ " Sol asked him angrily.

" _What do you mean?_ " Mercury inquired politely.

" _I did not say 'cultural heritage',_ " Perk corrected them. " _I said, 'Heritage'!_ "

" _What is the difference?_ " Sol wasn't giving up.

The captain sighed dramatically. " _The essence of the Heritage is the omega drive of my Starship, the transsinforation core. It's the applied phlebotinum that allows the Rocketeer ships to break through the barriers of space and time !_ " he proclaimed pompously.

"You could've started with that," Sol grumbled. "Now it's pretty clear that that was exactly _the thing that destroyed Earth when eggheads took... toyed it._ "

" _Exactly!_ " Perk confirmed adding tragism to his voice. " _That lamentable—_ "

" _And where is it?_ " Sol interrupted him. " _Don't tell me there are problems._ "

" _Alas,_ " the captain replied with a hint of embarrassment, " _There's a... little problem._ "

Sol groaned as she face-palmed dramatically.

" _What sort of a problem?_ " Mercury inquired worriedly.

" _We still can't develop a probe sturdy enough to reclaim the Core,_ " Perk admitted reluctantly. " _The orbit is decaying bit by bit and every time we finish a new model it turns out it wasn't durable enough so the probe fails... But don't worry! In a year or two—_ "

" _Are you saying,_ " Sol interrupted him, " _that the thing we need, orbits the black hole?_ "

" _Orbits it too closely, alas._ " The captain sighed dramatically.

" _At present, it's only seven kilometers,_ " Elizabeth added worriedly. " _We managed to deal with the tidal forces, but I'm afraid the hard X-rays are starting to go above the limits our technology. Even at the periods when the accretion disc goes quiescent, even the most primitive electronics inevitably burn out. I'm afraid to disappoint you, but the captain's optimism is baseless._ "

" _In that case,_ " Sol said with a cocky grin as she cracked her knuckles, " _you asked the right person!_ "

It was Akane's turn to get covered in cold sweat from the fear for her loved one.

(シーンブレイク)

While they were walking towards the dock, Elizabeth whispered something into Mercury's ear. She then retold it to her comrades out loud, knowing that no one around knew Japanese:

"We have to return the artifact not just because we need it. It continues interacting with the black hole — that's why its orbit is decaying. And this process is accelerating. No one wants to know what happens when the Ahs construct and the black hole collide. Knowing the local multiverse... I'm afraid it's the black hole that is in danger. And everyone closer than a couple thousand light years.

"So the heritage is bullshit, we'll be saving the world instead?" Sol replied, suddenly unexplainably happy. "Well, that's the stuff I'm used to!"

(シーンブレイク)

The bridge was feeling crowded. There was the couple on watch duty, two Senshi, Elizabeth, Becky and a couple more engineers who had trailed them. All except the watchmen were crowding around the captain's podium.

Captain Perk was, thankfully, absent: trying to get rid of him, Iris had kept nagging him about 'we'll have to fly as soon as possible' until he had left with a heavy sigh to 'perform pre-launch preparations'.

"I'm still apprehensive about the protection holding up," Mercury said as she was using the console of the captain's podium as a calculator. "Simple sunlight is one thing, but we have X-rays here! Our protection, despite its flexibility, wasn't designed for this!"

"You think that would have stopped him?" Iris asked her a rhetorical question. She was apprehensive too.

"No, it wouldn't have," Mercury agreed.

"Istead 'a planning my funeral," Sol's slightly grumpy voice reached from the console, "you'd better gimme an orbit correction."

Mercury's hands fluttered over the touchscreen. "Three degrees to the left, and push a bit harder," she concluded. "Minute twenty till you reach the parabolic trajectory. How are you holding up?"

"My hide is itching a bit," Sol replied. "And I can see the hole already. It's like a nauseatingly-blue star in the Southern Hydra, feels like a screw boring into your eye."

Pushing almost sixty gees worth of acceleration, Sailor Sol entered a a sharp parabolic orbit that would bring her close to the black hole pouring out deadly radiation. Everyone froze in tense anticipation. Just a little more...

The Senshi of the Sun was traveling at more than three hundred kilometers per second. The mighty gravitation pulled at her as she passed in eight and a half kilometers from the black hole, reversing her momentum and launching her back in a half of a second.

"Ouch, ow!" the loudspeaker hissed. "Owie, bugger!"

"What happened?" Iris grew worried. "Are you all right down there?"

"I just got jerked real hard. The force wasn't that strong, mind you, it just... pulled me in different directions. And it burns down here. Never mind, I'll manage!"

"That is not surprising!" Mercury explained. "You were affected by a stretching force of approximately two tonnes and its vector turned one eighty in a fraction of a second. When you reach the final orbit, spin synchronously as we planned. The centripetal force will add another two tonnes but you won't be jerked in different directions.

"All right. Give me the correction to reach the elliptic orbit!"

Now she had to bleed the extra 88 kilometers per second thus entering a circular orbit. To achieve this, she had to enter an elliptic orbit, then bleed the extra momentum, lowering the highest point with each orbit but keeping the lowest point firmly in place. That was because of the debris: dead probes were blocking up all the convenient approaches. Thus Mercury had chosen an orbit inclined to their plane at thirty degrees, with the lower point higher than the orbit of the token but lower than the closest dead probe. It was no joking matter: with things making several revolutions per second this close to the black hole, each orbiting object posed a veritable shredder you couldn't hope to just fly through.

The ellipse had to be shortened against the rules of rocket science: its axis would remain constant. If it deviates, a collision at such speeds would result in, as Mercury had explained to Sol in graphic detail, 'you won't even go splat, you'd simply vaporize'."

Narrowing the ellipse took only five minutes but everyone was felling wrung out at the end of it, like they ran a marathon race. First, when Sol was closing, she was constantly complaining about the bone-rattling shaking as her uniform spinning wasn't completely in phase with her not-so-uniform orbital motion. Then, as her revolution rate went over two per second, she began losing orientation while the the Doppler frequency shift made the radio connection unstable as she was moving back and forth at one thousandth of the speed of light. Finally, it turned out the X-ray radiation at such insane levels was leaking through the bubble of her shield. The electronics of her headset began failing.

"I finally stabilized it!" Sol's voice full of relief reached from the speakers. "It's circular! How do I know? It doesn't rattle me anymore! Flying with my legs tucked in, otherwise blood was rushing to my head. Well, it burns here, I must say! The hole is blinding even with my eyes closed! Hey! Are you hearing me? Hello, over!"

"We hear you!" Mercury said. "I'm confirming, your orbit is circular, eight point sixty five kilometers. You are now making almost four revolutions per second. Begin changing the orbit inclination as planned!"

"Hello, hello, over...! Hey, does anyone hear me?"

"It seems his receiver broke," Iris stated the obvious.

"It seems the redio's dead," said Sol. "All right, if you still hear me: I'm going to be twisting my orbit."

For the next three minutes they were watching the orbit of Sol change its inclination by the desired 30 degrees. A prohibitively expensive maneuver costing more than a hundred meters per second — unless you have a cheating reactionless drive like the wings of Eternal Sailor Sol. The locals had been taken aback when Mercury had explained this part of the plan to them. They were set too firmly in the trajectory optimization and fuel conservation principles that felt like axioms to them. They would never think up a plan so relatively low-risk as Mercury's.

The redhead tried to radio them only once more. They only could discern "..burns, the bugger!" through the crackling and squealing of corrupted encoding. At least, she was alive.

Changing the orbital plane took about three minutes. Descending towards the artifact's orbit took one more minute.

" _How would she detect it without our guidance?_ " Elizabeth was worrying. " _Curses, if only we had more robust headsets!_ "

" _She made it,_ " Mercury replied, watching the radar intently. " _She detected it somehow and is now joining her orbit with it._ " Just as planned. She was feeling immense relief that Sol proved so resourceful, able to find her bearings in this impossible situation and execute Mercury's plan perfectly without the intended outside guidance. She wished she'd be able to go there instead of the redhead. Alas, the part-time girl was the only one of them who managed to evolve to her ultimate, Eternal form.

Sol was now making five revolutions per second: as much as the artifact. Their orbits were growing closer.

Beep! The computer reported a correction. The artifact wasn't locating anymore while Sol's speed changed by half a meter per second. Then her orbit began rising slowly.

"She is almost at the probe!" Mercury grew worried. "I hope she notices it in time! It's time to perform the opposite maneuver of changing the orbital plane to enter the elliptic—"

One of the watchman consoles started beeping and flashing alarm signs.

"What's wrong?" Iris grew worried.

" _The accretion disc is destabilizing!_ " Mike shouted out in panic.

" _Stop panicking!_ " Elizabeth barked in a commanding voice. " _Shields to maximum! Lower the anti-radiation shutters! And sound a station-wide alarm._ "

Mercury could only look on helplessly at Sol's orbit drawn by the computer. Nine kilometers, three point seven revolutions per second. And no communication!

Alarm siren blaring, the illumination in the bridge turned red. The radar shut down saturated with static from the shield. Sol's trajectory disappeared from the screen.

" _I'm reading a spike of four! No, three magnitudes now!_ " Mike reported.

Mercury grew cold. Iris's hair stood on its ends. A thousand times!

Elizabeth glanced at the Senshi with sympathy as they stood in front of an empty screen with lost looks. She ordered: " _Launch the radar drones. Let them burn, but we must have an image!_ "

A few seconds of the operators working furiously later, the computer beeped starting to draw the orbit again.

By some miracle, Sol was still alive despite being irradiated with X-rays powerful enough to melt steel. She was accelerating at seventy gees right in the plane of her old orbit. The dead probe was in her way.

"What is she doing!" Mercury was horrified. "She'll collide with that—"

"Because it burns!" Iris snapped back angrily, her fists clenched. "Why else—"

The two rapidly rotating marks on the screen joined together making almost synchronous three and a half revolutions per second... Then both sharply changed their speeds, making the computer confused for a second. The trajectories billowed out with wide probability cones.

Mercury gasped.

"Bullshit," Iris growled. "You won't die that easily!"

The computer beeped. The mark of Sailor Sol was still accelerating at the same almost seventy gees, rapidly winding out the spiral of her orbit right in the plane filled with deadly debris.

"I wish she'd leave the plane, at least," Mercury moaned wiping icy sweat.

Sol's mark jerked from side to side. The computer tried belatedly to correct the estimated trajectory.

"No, it's easier for her to detect that debris and dodge it," Iris disagreed. "Because a spiral tilted at an angle would still cross its path, wouldn't it? But like this, the relative speed is minimal, in the limits of human perception."

" _The speed of the dead probe has changed by approximately thirteen meters per second,_ " Will piped in. " _What has happened there?_ "

" _She kicked it,_ " Iris explained like that should have been obvious. " _When their speeds became equal_. The only thing I can't understand is, why she didn't just go around it."

"At this revolution rate, the spiral is too dense," Mercury explained. "The distance between its coils is comparable to the size of the probe itself. I suppose... because it was hard to avoid, she decided that kicking it away was safer."

The accretion disc was belching X-rays in some ragged rhythm. A couple times its intensity spiked becoming a magnitude stronger. Sol was forced to wind her spiral slowly, unable to fly away right away as the gravity down there was still several thousand times stronger than the best acceleration she could manage. The desperate flight stretched for minutes. Thankfully, she was deftly dodging any debris in her way. When she reached the distance of eight hundred kilometers, she could finally overpower the gravity, so she started accelerating away without caring about a proper return orbit. Then she came to her senses and turned towards the station dropping her acceleration in half. A few minutes later she was closing in.

The Senshi ran towards the scooter dock... Where they got stuck, unable to persuade the watchful airlock that no, they did not need space suits. Somehow, someone managed to create a machine able to detect that without any AI.

Then there was a loud knocking at the outer door, so Iris and Mercury backed away to let Sol go through the airlock. Both were beside themselves with worry.

But finally, the air stopped hissing and the inner door opened.

"All my innards are itching!" Sol complained right away as she was scratching the arm in the hand of which she was holding a big silvery crystal. "Oww, I can't stand it!"

Her hair had faded becoming brownish-gray. Her skin was covered in spots of yellowish-green suntan.

"I'm so glad you made it," Mercury told her, face flushing pink from a powerful mix of relief, joy and embarrassment for her failures — she should have foreseen the radio failing! "Despite my failure to guide you."

"It's all right," Sol replied awkwardly. She then twitched. "Nnngh..."

Iris jumped up to her husband and started scratching the other girl's back.

Sol let out a groan of relief and pain, relaxing slightly. Then she perked up: "Come on, let's drag this thing to Captain Kunou."

(シーンブレイク)

The interspace pioneer's ship looked much like a boot with small wings at the sides of its heel. A thick oval pipe was growing from the base somewhat reminiscent of a space shuttle. It was widening towards the top, inclined forward.

Iris smiled involuntarily. Sol was still scratching herself noisily, even as outwardly all spots had already faded and her hair restored its bright red color.

Mercury squinted, assessing: "Interesting, it looks like the projection of the top matches the projection of the bottom.

"Really?" Sol looked closer. "You're right. The top cross-section of this... flared end completely covers the sole with its shadow."

"I suppose it's for sublight flights with constant thrust that generates artificial gravity," Mercury explained. "Though having two armor plates, one for acceleration phase, the other for the decceleration phase, seems wasteful."

The matte white 'boot' had a two meters thick 'sole' shining like mirror, protruding a bit from the sides. The top of the boot had a similar top, also protruding a bit. Both had the projection of a slightly sharpened ellipse narrowing slightly towards the back. Which was enhancing the starship's aerodynamics but increasing its similarity to a boot.

"The size seems insufficient for a journey of many years," Mercury added: the entire ship was twenty something meters high. The bottom part, that had a three-pane cockpit windshield and a couple port-lights at is sides, was the size of a very modest one-storey house. "Maybe they employ suspended animation?"

"We didn't ask how much time it takes to fly between worlds!" Sol grew worried.

The captain had already disappeared in the hatch that was positioned, for some reason, at the top of the 'foot' in front of the tower of the main body. There was a ladder of metallic brackets on the rounded side of the ship, but the redhead simply jumped up to the roof, then jumped down the hatch. Iris followed her.

" _Farewell._ " Mercury bowed to Elizabeth and other seers-off. " _Thank you for everything._ "

The crowd raised a hum of disappointed sighs and wishes of good speed.

Three sections of the body opened at the top part of the 'boot' with ugly squeals, three thick cylinders with nozzles moving out on long arms with a couple ball joints each. All this stuff began flexing back and forth as if limbering up. The process was accompanied with horrible creaking and squealing.

" _I hope it doesn't fail,_ " Elizabeth said with a wince. " _It was grounded for eighty years, parked here without any maintenance._ "

" _Eighty years?_ " Mercury asked, surprised.

" _Oh, of course. We forgot to tell you. The incident happened 127 years ago. Station Kappa was built 98 years ago. As far as I know from the historical records — from those that aren't in public access — The captain wasn't flying anywhere from almost the time the station was founded. Well, not since it turned out that that phlebotinum of his wasn't as easy to get as everyone thought at first. He was sitting here pouting for eight decades, from time to time taking little breaks to help our scientists advance our technology._ "

" _I see._ " Mercury paused, lost in thought.

" _Everyone, get on board!_ " Perk's voice thundered in the confined space.

Elizabeth winced. " _Captain, are you sure you don't want to refill on reaction mass?_ "

" _Don't worry, oh harsh rose of astronomy!_ " thundered in return. " _I'm not going for the stars today! It will be as simple as getting from a high orbit to the planetary surface and back!_ "

Elizabeth made a grimace. There were small laughters from the crowd, and even Becky tittered.

" _Farewell!_ " Mercury replied as she jumped up onto the 'foot' of the 'boot'. Waving the final goodbye she disappeared in the hatch.

" _Begin the countdown!_ " the captain thundered dramatically.

" _Everyone heard that?_ " Elizabeth turned around to face the station habitants. " _Move it, free the dock!_ " She started herding them away.

(シーンブレイク)

The hatch led to a narrow cylindrical airlock that could be turned around its axis, thus giving access to one of four exits. First Mercury got to a small storage closet filled with space suits and bicycles. Then she found herself in a long and narrow compartment running along the starboard side of the aft part. There were nine suspended animation pods lined up along the right wall, in three stacks of three. The next she opened into a spacious cabin, with a king size canopy bed. This room looked like it was taking up most of the aft. There was an another door in the back wall, but Ami wasn't one of those who nose into other people's secrets. Yet another turn and she finally found herself in the cockpit. Feeling strong doubts about the ship construction — you couldn't even get from the passenger cabin to the cockpit if the airlock was open to the oputside — Mercury took a look around.

The first thing that caught her eye was the deliberate archaism. There were no screens on even digital indicators, only gauges, levers and verniers. As if the starship was a prop from a movie of the 50's.

In front of the horseshoe-shaped console there were three massive seats with pistons and other mechanisms at their bases. The captain, naturally, was sitting in the central seat. Sol and Iris had already taken the seats to the right and left of him, accordingly. Behind them there were two more seats at the walls with some sorts of consoles in front of each, now deactivated.

The floor shuddered, then a part of the dock wall visible through the windshield began moving by downwards. The Coriolis force pulled her forward, it felt as if the ship tilted.

The side walls were occupied with various instrument boxes and racks, alight with multitudes of indicator lights, making the spacious cockpit much narrower. Mercury walked up to the captain's seat and looked over his shoulder. The windshield was narrow, providing a disgustingly small arc of vision. How will we be orienting ourselves without screens and side view cameras? Or a radar, at least? And that control column with a half-circle flight control wheel was looking suspiciously like that of airplane.

" _Excuse me,_ " Mercury addressed the captain, " _but how do you determine your ship's bearings?_ "

" _Don't worry, my young conqueror of space!_ " he heralded. " _You are in the able hands of an experienced rocketeer!_ "

" _But still?_ " Mercury insisted. " _Excuse me, but the controls that I see don't look nearly sufficient._ "

" _Everything comes through a direct neural link,_ " Perk admitted reluctantly, losing a good part of his loudness.

" _I see,_ " the blue-haired Senshi replied. " _I'm sorry._ " It's not as bad as it looks, she thought with relief. It would be silly to expect banal consoles with buttons from a civilization able to reach the stars. Her own moon computer — she was missing it dearly now — had probably materialized in a form most familiar and convenient for her, that's why it was being controlled with a keyboard. Why then did Perk need these props? To impress natives?

The gravity kept decreasing, so the Coriolis force was making it hard to stand on her feet. Mercury hurried to reach one of the rear seats, leaning down to almost touch the floor against the perceived inclination. Easily pulling herself into the seat with her tenfold strength, the girl buckled herself down. The belts were like safety belts in a car, but with two of them, criss-crossing. Suddenly, a soft brace emerged from the side to fix her legs below the knees.

The gravity almost disappeared. The lift raised the ship into the airlock. The gate was starting to open. I wonder when did they have the time to pump all the air out? Mercury thought. Bright sunlight shone in their faces making everyone squint.

" _And so we are departing!_ " Perk announced flipping some tumblers on his seat's armrests.

" _You did not reply how long is... going to be the flight between the worlds,_ " Iris noted. She wasn't into spending several weeks with this... heroic pioneer in a confined starship. Her anti-pervert sense was tingling.

" _Don't worry! Transsinforation is instaneous, we only have to reach the proper orbit around the Earth that has been destroyed so tragically in this world, to appear over Earth of the world you need! Because impulses are conserved!_ "

With a barely perceptible hum behind the back wall, the ship tilted forward slowly to fit through the gate. All that was visible through the windshield now was a patch of the lift floor, sunlight falling at it at a sharp angle casting its ribbed pattern, dents and scuff marks into a sharp relief. Carefully, Perk moved his boot towards the exit. The creaking of all three arms was resonating through the cockpit but the engines held by them weren't heard.

"By the way," Sol finally asked the vital question, "how do we tell the captain the coordinates of that world? And haven't we forgotten to detransform?"

" _How do we pass you the coordinates of the world?_ " Mercury translated.

" _Just send it to my neural interface,_ " Perk replied matter-of-factly, without his usual boisterousness.

Mercury was already working the medallion. "All right... Got the coordinates. We don't need to detransform, the magic factor of that world is zero point six, all planets are in their places. Nothing would happen to our transformations, we'll just be weakened." She tapped some keys peering at the tiny screen. "I wish I knew how to link up with that interface... Hm... A list of links... We three are there, something called 'quantum manipulator' is listed for each of us. Not what I need, but I wonder..." After a moment of hesitation she sent the coordinates at hers. There was a sudden prickle of pain at her temples and she realized she knew the coordinates instinctively, with all the formulas she never learned. "Ow."

A very disturbing discovery. Judging by the interface options, each of their minds could be manipulated through the medallion. What if not just through the medallion?

" _You are Ahs users, right?_ " Perk inquired as he turned the flight control wheel. " _Hmm, let me think... As far as I remember, the ship's core is registered in the system, under its true name, as 'omega-drive'._ "

Mercury paged down through the list of links. There were lots of lines made of mixed numbers and Latin characters. "Not here, not here eithere... Aha, here it is! 'Omega-error, access rights not found-transporter'. Weird." She sent the data.

" _I got it!_ " Perk exclaimed joyfully. " _Now we only have to reach the right orbit. As I understand, you are all resistant to g-forces?_ "

" _Up to forty or fifty gees,_ " Sol said waving his concerns aside.

The captain flipped some tumbler on the wheel. The ship creaked with all its unoiled parts and they were pressed against the seats with approximately five gees. In their Senshi forms it felt like a slight increase in gravity.

For the remaining twenty or so minutes the captain kept telling tall stories revolving around his heroic deeds. It felt suspiciously like him trying to pick the girls up. Mostly Sol, at that. Blarg.

Mercury was sitting there quietly, digging through the medallion in attempts to figure out who, when and why had attached mind control circuits to them. All in vain: there was no info on that.

But finally, here it was. The moment of truth. The captain decreased the thrust to approximately one gee and turned the ship around. A spot of sunlight crawled across the ceiling highlighting dust and scuff marks on the rare gauges placed there. Then the ship took the final position, and only blackness could be seen outside again.

" _Prepare for the jump, performing the final homing!_ " Perk announced louder than usual.

Iris didn't like the sound of his voice and his side glances at her. Her anti-pervert sense had been screaming at her as it was, but now... Kunou, pure Kunou. Or even worse. But what was the catch?

The ship started vibrating, a high pitched whine rising in volume. Then everything in the cockpit started glowing with shimmering rainbowy colors surrounded with multicolored haloes. The glow was growing brighter faster and faster, then there was a flash accompanied with an ugly, resonating crunch like someone crushed a glass the size of a mountain.

Something is wrong, Ranma thought trying to blink away the spots swimming in her vision. There was a blue ball of Earth hanging beyond the windshield. But something was amiss. And this suspicious draft...

" _Oops, did I forget to warn you?_ " Perk exclaimed with such fake surprise, such poorly concealed glee in his voice that the girls instantly saw red.

Ami shrieked covering herself with her hands when she finally realized she was naked.

" _You see, there's a little snag,_ " Perk was smooth-talking, somehow not noticing the two bonfires of battle aura blazing at both sides of him as he kept _ogling_ ·to the left and right. " _During the transsinforation some induced harmonics make magic glitch and fail. It's such a pity you can't unbuckle until landing, otherwise I'd, of course—_ "

He didn't finish his phrase, nor did he get the deserved crossed eyes. Two fists slammed into his cranium synchronously from both sides, and the captain... crunched, sparkling...?

The girls stared at Perk, taken aback. He convulsed, breathed out a whiff of smoke. Then there was a bright flash, a pop, and the top of his head disappeared revealing an empty depression with stumps of pipes and wires.

The girls blinked loudly in silence.

The desert wind rolled a tumbleweed across the cockpit.

The girls blinked again.

Then Ranma snickered, snickered again, and started laughing out loud flailing about in her seat. If not the belts, she'd be rolling on the floor now. "Oh, I can't hold it... Such a hero...! A fearless... pioneer...! Ooh, I'm dying...!"

Akane blinked uncomprehendingly again. Then she felt a stab of terror: what if he went nuts?

The redhead was moaning now, aching from her laughter.

"Ranma! Answer me, Ranma!" Akane shouted with sincere worry in her voice as she tried frantically to unbuckle.

"Huh...?" The other girl finally fell silent, wiping her tears away now. "What's the matter?"

"Don't you dare scaring me like that again!" Akane flared.

Ranma blinked uncomprehendingly in return as she tried reflexively to back away: "What got into you, Akane? Well, I'm sorry, all right. I couldn't help it, just look at this anecdote of the century!" She pointed at the body slumped in the seat between them.

"An anecdote?" She wasn't amused. "What anecdote? All I see is a dead body... Wait a minute, is he a robot or what?" She stared uncomprehendingly at the mechanical mess in the captain's head, some blue liquid trickling down to the headrest.

"Naw," Ranma explained, snickering again. "Remember he was telling us about _other_ ·rocketeers playing it safe by uploading their mind into a crystal and installing it into an artificial body?"

Akane glanced at the remains of the captain's head. "You think, this is it...? Where's the crystal, then?"

"Teleported home, where else might it be. If it's an Ahs-construct, as I suspect, then any barriers between worlds are no obstacle for it."

"Oh, I see now... Why were you guffawing then?"

"Think about it: such an hero, a legend, all posh... And such a cheap safety freak on the inside and a general jerk. Yeech." She shivered covering herself involuntarily, then added venomously: "I wish the folks on that base learned who he really is."

"Earth was destroyed 127 years ago," Ami injected from behind them. "When researching that same Ahs-construct. Brought into their world by Perk, personally."

"Err, so what?" Ranma inquired. She was still shuddering at times from suppressed laughter.

"Their world doesn't know any technologies to counteract aging," Ami explained.

"So they know everything about him," Akane finished with a sigh.

"Turns out, I'm the clueless one again." Ranma pouted. "Hey! Nobody told me about the hundred years! I though it had happened recently!"

"But what should we do now?" Akane asked. "Just sit and wait? Is there an autopilot on this ship?"

The medallion blared an alarm.

"The loop is not closed!" Ami told them. Then she performed some actions on the keyboard making the medallion emit a constant, long beeping like a cardio monitor when the patient's heart stops. "I switched it to a constant acoustical—"

"There's no autopilot on this rustbucket!" Ranma shouted unbuckling hastily. "We have to transform and get out! Come on, transform, I can carry you both!"

"Right away." Akane unbuckled too, jumping up and raising her henshin wand that had luckily remained hanging around her neck on a cord. "Iris prism power, Make-up!"

For a moment, the cockpit was filled with a kaleidoscope of multi-colored lights, like crazy rainbows performing a round dance.

And nothing happened. The naked Akane remained a naked Akane.

"Mine doesn't work either!" Ranma informed them, tense. "For how long will these harmonics keep affecting us?"

"Let's wait," Ami suggested. "maybe our magic will restore in a minute or two?"

The medallion kept beeping.

"It won't," Ranma replied. "Else this thing would have shut up by now. Let me try..." She took a stance like she was transforming with a wand.

The medallion kept beeping.

"It won't hel—" Akane began.

"Sol eternal, Make-up!"

A flash! Akane rubbed at her eyes: the cockpit was filled with clear water. Sun was shining through the duckweed of the ceiling, small fishes were flitting about, mermaid-Ranma was moving her tail...

Akane blinked the confusion away. No, there was nothing of the sorts, the cockpit was as it was before.

"Sol eternal, Make-up‼"

A flash! Blinding sun twinkles dance across Ranma's body painting her skin in white and red colors of her Senshi uniform like some bizarre seifuku-styled body art.

"SOL ETERNAL, MAKE-UP‼！"

This time it flashed seriously. Ranma jumped up to the ceiling with a yelp, the cockpit filling with the stench of burnt hair. Shaking off her stupor, Akane rushed to help extinguish the pigtail.

All that time, the medallion have been beeping steadily.

"Ranma!" Ami called out to the redhead. "Don't push yourself! That isn't the way out!"

"What then?" Ranma shouted angrily. Thankfully, the bodily harm was limited to her hairdo: the end of the pigtail had burned away. Bereft of the tie, the hair puffed out surrounding her head like a shaggy, singed red cloud.

Akane looked into her husband's eyes. He was burning with inner energy like during a battle. All his thoughts were focused on one thing: how to survive and save his loved one. But piloting starships wasn't a field familiar to him.

"Can't we turn this... starship around somehow?" Ranma asked. "We are now braking at one gee, and Earth is attracting us at as much as that. A couple more minutes and we'd slam into the atmosphere at a blunt angle. There won't be left enough of us to scrape off the floor, this rustbucket will burn up like a match."

"I don't know!" Ami admitted tapping the keys frantically. "As he said, he was controlling it through a neural interface. But I haven't the foggiest idea how to crack the ship's computer using the medallion!"

"Neuro... what? To crack?"

"The computer was connected directly to his brain," Ami explained. "Meaning all these levers and gauges are just props!"

The blue ball beyond the windshield was growing, one had to lean close to the glass to see the edges.

"Are you sure?" Ranma asked.

"Not... Most probably," Ami replied beginning to panic.

The beeping of the medallion was unnerving. Maybe it was because it meant "you will all die"? The sound persisted ominously without interruption.

"Let's see..." Ranma walked up to the captain's seat and tugged at the flight control wheel unceremoniously. It did not bulge. "Locked?" She began rummaging around the captain's body. The beeping faltered for a moment, becoming intermittent. "We'll live!" Ranma exclaimed in joy and started digging through the pockets with redoubled energy. "Ah-hah!" She victoriously raised a small silver car key. The medallion shut up, then continued beeping.

"What are you doing?" Akane asked with mixed hope and wariness.

"I have no idea!" the redhead replied merrily. "So where do I..." She examined the flight controls. The medallion shut up. She found a keyhole, inserted the key and turned it. The medallion was silent.

Ami stopped her attempts to crack something she didn't even know where to search for. She stared at Ranma in relief: "Ranma-kun, you saved us... Careful!"

"No time for thinking, we have to drive!" the redhead shouted twisting the flight control wheel sharply. It felt like the ship careened, the sudden acceleration jerking the girls to the left. Akane held onto her seat to steady herself, the chair creaking under the force of her grip. But Ranma was only gripping the wheel. Using it instinctively as a handhold, she twisted it again, with her entire weight behind it. Metal groaned as the ship spun wildly like a top. Akane lost her hold and was slammed into the back wall that suddenly became floor. Ami cried out hanging on the belts. The medallion slid from her hands and tinkled on the floor, rolling away into some nook. Panicking, Ranma released the controls. The stick rebounded to the central position. The ship was jerked in other direction. The redhead flew across the cockpit to slam head-first into one of the instrument boxes along the right wall. Her head was fine — it's all bone, after all — but the box was less lucky. It sparkled and its control lights died. Many lights on the front console turned red as the quiet, barely registering hum of the engines died down.

The medallion started beeping again from a crack between two instrument boxes.

"Idiot‼！" Akane snapped as she flexed her shoulders tearing herself free from the wall that was full of gauges, tumblers and other jutting details that had left impressions in her back. "Ow."

"Oof..." Ami breathed out. "You can't act so recklessly!" It was hard for her to breathe: the ship was spinning so fast that the acceleration pressing down on her wouldn't let her lift a hand.

"Buf iph waf clozh'd..." Ranma complained from the floor as she pulled all her extremities under her to stand up.

"Sit, belt down, then drive!" Akane barked pushing against the Coriolis force like it was wind. Reaching her seat she sat into it and belted herself down. "How long should we be waiting for you!"

Ranma hastily climbed up to the captain's. Unbuckling the unresponsive carcass she wanted to simply dump it to the floor but the medallion still beeped incessantly. What does the bugger want, our time is counted in seconds! She dragged the sorta-dead body to the free seat — which was the rear left one — and buckled it down there, in her haste putting it backwards. The medallion approved with reassuring silence. Then she returned to the captain's seat. She wanted to buckle down but the beeping resumed. Ranma froze for a moment in confusion, then started moving her hands over the console. The beeping stopped. She forcefully pulled at the horizontal handle there. A long rod slid out of the console trailing it. Cracking and crunching could be heard, like something was breaking in there. The lights on the console were dying down or turning red. Only the silent medallion kept Akane from a frightened shout to be careful.

The medallion started beeping again. Ranma resumed moving her hands over the console until she found a huge red button. She pressed it...

Akane's heart skipped a beat. "Kuraizu puropulsoru," she read the label under the button.

The medallion was silent.

"It's the main engine," Ami commented leaning to the left to see the console around the now empty seat in front of her.

The ship was still spinning, the blue planet flashing by at more that one turn per second. Any details of its surface were blurred out.

"What sort of engines were we using until now, then?" Akane asked.

"So...?" Ranma fidgeted, not knowing what to do. The medallion was silent. "Will it start anytime soon or what?"

"There are warning labels," Ami replied. "What I can see from here are 'In no circumstances activate closer that one megametre to planets possessing an atmosphere' and 'Don't forget to check interstellar gas density before activating'. Maybe—"

The ship shuddered from a sharp pulse, loud like a gunshot, that made their ears ring.

"What was that?" Akane asked with trepidation.

"I dunno!" Ranma replied merrily. "Don't care, either. The medallion is silent enough!"

The pulse repeated, then again, then these pulses started thundering incessantly, making the ship shake and torturing their eardrums. The biggest box at the right wall started ringing, flashing red lights like a Christmas tree. Akane eyed it warily.

"What is it?" Ranma shouted over the din.

"The main engine controller!" Ami called back.

"So it started at last!" Ranma shouted merrily trying to outshout the rising noise. "It's getting hard to listen to the medallion!" She pushed the flight controls. The ship reacted slowly, reluctantly, beginning to slow its spin. "Bugger, there's almost no thrust!"

"I'll get it!" Akane hastily unbuckled to rush over in search for the medallion, crouching and grabbing at the floor with her hands. The triple g-force was not a problem for her, unlike the Coriolis force and the small sideways pull from the steering that were dragging her in unpredictable directions.

"Bring it to me!" Ami shouted. "I'll switch it to visuals!"

The pulses were hitting more frequently, the ship was responding to the controls better. Soon Akane had to hold onto the floor and instrument racks with all her might: Ranma was eager to negate the spin and inertia was dragging the climbing girl towards the bow as if she was hanging from a steep cliff.

"Where is—" Akane shouted, unable to hear herself. At this moment the spin stopped: Ranma oriented the ship by guesswork with its top facing forward, thus causing her wife to be thrown around. It was Akane's turn to break something with her head. The gravity, almost negligible, was pressing straight down now. She found the medallion with ease and handed it to Ami, while holding at her seat prudently.

The thundering roar of the quickening pulses was turning into a hellish vibration as the acceleration increased. But without the medallion they couldn't even tell if they were accelerating in the right direction! Earth hung in front of the windshield, completely unmoving to the naked eye. Had they killed their horizontal velocity and were now falling straight down? Akane saw glinting threads of rivers and white foam of clouds, with a dark outline of shadows under them. Too close!

Ami was tapping the keys fighting the leaden heaviness in her arms as g-force reached one gee and kept rising. Then the thundering transformed into a rending shriek, like there was a disc saw in each of their ears, tearing at their heads from inside. The vibration was gone, but instead heavy g-forces pressed Ami down into her seat. With a frantic effort, she continued working with only the fingers of the hand holding the medallion, as she was unable to tear it away from her thigh.

Akane kept upright. It felt like she weighted half a ton now. A trifle. Slowly, she leaned down to take the medallion. Ami was breathing with difficulty, blood ebbing from her face, her breasts creeping to the sides like beached jellyfishes. Akane lifted the medallion. A large black kanji of "death" was taking up the entire glowing screen. The shriek was rising in power, its tonality changing. The g-force was rising too. Casting a worried glance at Ami, whose eyes were glassing over, Akane went towards her seat. The ribbed surface of the floor was cutting into her feet. Just tripping would be bad. Halfway there she handed the medallion to Ranma thus making her walk that much harder: the redhead began twisting the flight controls turning the ship here and there to guess the right direction. Akane barely held herself upright. Finally she reached her seat! But before she could sit down, Ranma pulled one more lever. The screeching turned into an ear-piercing keening, the g-force redoubling. Then it increased again. Owie! Akane learned that twenty, or, more likely, twenty five gees without a bra feel painful. It wasn't that hard for her to stand upright holding the twenty-some-fold weight of her body, but her vision was starting to darken and her feet were prickling like they had fallen asleep. Supporting her hurting secondary sex characteristics with her left arm, Akane sat down gripping the armrest with her right hand. It creaked, bending. What a shoddy construction! She cast a worried glance at Ami. Would she survive the g-force?

Ranma had wound the medallion chain around her left wrist, while holding the handwheel with both hands. She was driving by medallion only, not sparing a glance outside. The screen was empty, reacting to her intent. Sometimes the kanji for 'death' flickered over it, urging the redhead to move her hand over the console in search of another button.

"Why are we accelerating along the surface of Earth?" Akane wanted to say. "Shouldn't we be braking? With ship's bottom facing down?" But there was no sense in asking: the sound of the main engine was drowning all other sounds. Besides how would Ranma know? She was just following their 'Ariadne's thread'.

A few seconds later, the engine's keening changed becoming husky and strained. A glow like ghostly gas flames emerged beyond the windshield. The ship began shuddering and swerving off. The engine sounded more and more husky, busting its guts in the hostile atmosphere. The acceleration was slowly dropping. The flame became brighter and brighter until it was blinding. Ranma frowned glancing at the windshield being bathed in plasma, then at the medallion. But she continued accelerating, just tilting the ship slightly to redirect a portion of the thrust upwards. As a result it was taking the fiery greeting of the disturbed atmosphere head-on, right at the windshield. Akane noticed something guttering across: either the hull was melting, or the glass itself. To distract herself from this harrowing sight, Akane turned her eyes at the engine controller box that was more arcane and mystic to her than any magic. That sight was not reassuring either: it was sparking, even the red lights on it were mostly gone now. The thrust was decreasing, g-force tilting further and further from vertical as if the ship was tilting forward.

Ranma frowned at the medallion. Akane stared in horror at the right pane of the windshield and the brightly glowing cracks spreading across it. Then it shattered... It took a whole second for Akane to realize she was still alive. The blinding light pouring into the cockpit along scorching heat was because only the outer layer of the double glass had been equipped with an optical filter. But there was only one layer left now, separating them from flames that would make any blowtorch envious! Akane's hair stood on it sends: she could see dark shadows of the shards, still sticking at the edges, soften, bend, then be carried away by the oncoming stream.

To her relief, Ranma turned the ship bottom forward so that the flying boot was taking the fiery welcome of the rapidly thickening atmosphere with the thick armor plate of its 'sole'. The flame was flickering ahead, vaguely visible through the runny windshield. The g-force rose at first, then began dropping rapidly. Something blue and white could be seen through the muddy glass. A sky with clouds? The engine wheezed like it was in its final death throes and the g-force all but disappeared as they began to free fall. Ranma frowned: the medallion displayed 'death' again. The redhead started moving her hand over the console hastily. Stopping over some lever which she pulled sharply.

The wheezing was replaced with a thundering vibration. The acceleration rose sharply, then began to drop again. The controller box was still sparking, red lights dying one after another. The pulses rattling the ship were slowing. Then the controller shorted like a bomb went off inside: there was a flash, panels flew off - and everything died. All lights went dark and the engine's agony ended, leaving only a ringing silence and the weightlessness of free fall.

"We are falling!" Akane took the time to shout the obvious. Then the mutilated starship shook as it hit water, the world beyond the windshield darkening. The cockpit was plunged into greenish twilight. Accompanied by the muffled high pitched bubbling as water boiled instantly on contact, the ship wobbled slowly, then hit bottom on an almost level keel.

"We're getting outta here!" Ranma shouted unbuckling hastily and checking the bag of tokens.

"Wait!" Akane tried to stop her. "Let's search for something to wear!" Now, with the stress of survival over, she began to feel quite naked.

"Are you so eager to bathe in boiling water?" The redhead waved at the right windshield pane, which was about to burst. There were first cracks spreading over the runny, charred glass. "Or to check if high voltage is still running through all this machinery around us?"

Akane's eyes went wide. She was out of the seat in half a second, simply ripping the jammed belt open. Ranma had unbuckled Ami and was carefully carrying the unconscious girl toward the airlock.

They squeezed all three into the narrow cylinder... Then they stopped not knowing what to do: there was no light, the button wasn't working.

"Hold them!" Ranma handed Ami and the medallion to her wife. "Repeat it to me out loud!" She started feeling about the narrow space. There was ominous crackling from the windshield behind them and no less ominous sounds from a wall to the right, as if someone was torturing an I-beam right beyond it.

"Repeat what...? Oh, got it! No, no, no, no. Yes! No, yes... yes, no, yes..."

Guided by the readings on the medallion voiced by Akane, Ranma found a small hatch on the floor, with a manual drive handle under it. The redhead began winding it, twisted awkwardly between the legs of her comrades pressed against the walls. The cylindrical airlock began turning, and soon there was a metallic wall instead of the cockpit. It was dark and hot in here. Heat was coming from each other's bodies, from the hatch overhead and from one wall that was becoming suspiciously hot.

"Maybe," Akane gulped nervously, "we wait a bit? It's boiling out there!" She was beginning to shake nervously.

"What does the medallion say?"

"...no."

"You see... Whoa!" Ranma jerked away from a wall as a red-hot spot appeared on it suddenly, its glow very visible in the dark. This spot was spreading and becoming brighter. "We're getting outta here!" pushing with her legs against the opposite walls Ranma climbed up to the hatch and spun its handwheel. She pushed, then hit the jammed hatch forcefully.

Akane squeezed her eyes shut when the airlock was flooded with greenish daylight and boiling... correction, simply hot water. Grabbing two girls under her arms, Ranma catapulted them out with a powerful thrust of her legs, to move as fast as possible away from the surface of the ship, which was still emitting bubbles of hot steam.

The movement through water that was turning gradually from hot to cool took an eternity by Akane's estimate. Then Ranma surfaced holding a helpless girl under each arm. "Ami?" she asked worriedly. "Ami, are you all right?"

"No, you idiot, she is not," Akane wanted to yell. "First extreme g-forces, then she was dragged under water while unconscious!" But she restrained herself and kept silent.

Not giving them time to worry, Ami suddenly drew breath and started coughing, while making weak, uncoordinated motions with her arms.

"She's alive!" the redhead exclaimed with joy.

Akane looked back over her shoulder. Approximately a half of the boot-shaped ship was towering over the surface, surrounded by bubbling and steaming water. The white body was charred, in places hatches and some other square fragments were missing. The ball-jointed arms holding the engines were twisted and looked dislocated. What caught her attention however, was the incandescent white glow visible through the ship's many holes, as if something inside had heated to the melting point. And it was melting! Metal was dropping viscously into the water with angry hisses.

"Let's swim a bit further awa—" Akane began.

There was a dull pop from below, then a churning charge of air bubbles erupted from the water. Then there was a dull whoosh that hit them with a weak shockwave, and the ship started tilting sideways. Thankfully, away from the girls, but...

"Dive‼！" Akane yelled.

The redhead obeyed without a thought, jerking them all underwater and swimming vigorously, flexing her entire body. A fierce hissing came from behind, sounding especially scary underwater. It was followed by dull roar. Akane risked cracking her eyes open. The surface overhead was covered with running sheets of foam, with whiteness visible above. She squeezed her eyes shut again, imagining the tornado of hot steam raging above the water. Ranma kept swimming underwater for a long time, until they started running out of breath. Then she surfaced with caution, worrying for Ami. The blue-haired girl started breathing by some miracle, even as she had fallen unconscious again. The surroundings were hidden with clouds of steam, hot and humid. Something was roaring and whooshing in this shroud, resonating through the water and making their bodies vibrate.

"Linger, you said?" Ranma asked. Without any disapproval, though. The redhead started swimming away from the bubbling remains of the starship, moving through duckweed and algae. Soon, offshore reeds emerged from the murk and Akane could finally stand, doing her part in transporting Ami.

When they walked to the shore stepping carefully barefoot through ooze, steam was already beginning to dissipate.

The body of water turned to be a tiny lake amidst a summer temperate forest. The sun was high in the sky.

"This must be some sort of dirty cosmic joke!" Akane swore heartily when they laid Ami carefully on the grass under a sprawling birch tree. "It's as if, I don't know, there's a pervert in the sky inventing circumstances where we time and again turn up naked!"

"Well, I wouldn't say I strictly disapprove." Ranma smirked.

"Idiot!" Akane snapped at her, blushing. She tried to get Ranma with a foot to the head.

"Ooh!" the redhead remarked approvingly as she leaned just a tiny bit to the side. "Your form is perfect as always, my dear!" Ducking under a fist speeding at her, she kissed her wife by the cheek, paying quite deliberately with a hook that connected with her ear. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, as if!" Akane breathed out, trying to calm down. Ranma's eyes were roaming her body causing a hot tingling sensation, along with disturbing disgust towards the same-gender love. She covered herself involuntarily with her arms. "You'd better, uh... We have a mission and stuff. Are the tokens all right? Where's the next one?"

"Wasn't that your job?" Ranma made innocent eyes.

Ami had a coughing fit.

"Are you all right, Ami-chan?" Akane crouched worriedly beside her.

"My head hurts," the blue-haired girl replied blinking cobwebs away. "Where are we?"

Ranma finally stopped eating her wife with her eyes, finding the decency to turn away.

"We have landed," Akane explained. "We are all right, but the ship is kind of—"

A powerful explosion thundered from the lake, raising a huge column of water and steam.

"I see." Ami sat up with an effort. "Give me the medallion, Akane-chan. Let's find out where the token is."

"Damn jerk," Ranma commented looking carefully away. "If not for the rats in his attic, we'd have landed right next to the token now. I hope it doesn't turn out to be on the other side of the planet? I ain't feeling like walking twenty thousand kilometers. Especially if our Senshi magic won't restore."

Ami tapped the keys. "No, the token is only ninety kilometers away. Let me employ the, um, radar mode."

"Excellent!" Ranma exclaimed. "Akane, grab Ami and let's go. Remember, like that time in the noxland?"

"What do you mean, let's go?" She was outraged. "What if we meet people? Are you going to summon the Zeroth one like this?"

"Well, any ideas, then? What should we do, make ourselves skirts of spruce branches?"

"We could see if something washed ashore after the explosion," Ami suggested, blushing.

"All right." The redhead gave up with a sigh. "Don't complain if we are late." She bounded towards the lake.

"I think he just likes the idea of travelling in the company of two naked girls," Akane shared her thoughts with Ami, sounding unsure.

"Well, how would I know," Ami replied, embarrassed. "He is your husband, after all. You know him better."

Ranma returned soon, her entire body reddened, carrying shreds of pink silk: "Here. There are many more things floating closer to the center, but I had enough of swimming in boiling water."

Under Ami's guidance the two martial artists quickly ripped the pieces of cloth to ribbons tying these to each other where the length wasn't sufficient. Then they constructed minimalistic bikinis of sorts. Ranma tied her wild, singed mane off at the back of her head, turning it into a puffy, wavy ponytail.

Akane was carrying Ami on her back: she wasn't about to trust her to Ranma when they were both almost naked! They started jogging towards their goal at a leisure pace, orienting themselves by the radar showing quite narrow a sector. Their way led through dense deciduous forest, its monotony interupted but once by a small river. The girls weren't in a hurry, going around any dense growths of young spruces, stinging nettles or general shrubbery. The frequent swampy patches were being crossed straight through: with no shoes they didn't have to worry about getting their feet wet. The forest looked just like the ones in northern Hokkaido, sans lianes. Even the uncounted hordes of mosquitoes were present, but couldn't match the speed of the martial artists' 'lazy' pace.

"I wonder," Akane said. "What could be so deadly out there to the sides that makes the sector of passable routes so narrow? Well, I could understand it back in that wasteland..."

They stumbled onto a bear. The girls froze in indecision. The bear too.

"Get outta our way!" Ranma snapped at it. "Shoo, shoo!"

The bear fled flashing its round posterior for a moment.

"Deadly?" Ranma seemed lost in thought as she continued running. "Well... Ami, does the sector get narrower?" she asked with sudden worry.

"A moment... It had narrowed a bit, from the moment we started running. Just a couple lines."

"It's not something deadly to us!" Ranma exclaimed. "It's time running out by some reason! Come on, run, quick! The more time in reserve, the better!" She dashed full tilt: the thin, whip-like birch threes with crowns of thin branches at incredible height weren't conductive to tree-hopping.

"The sector just widened," Ami commented.

"So I was right! Akane, don't fall behind!"

Now they were crashing through any dense growths of young spruces, stinging nettles and general shrubbery. Ami squeezed her eyes shut pressing herself against Akane's back: branches were whipping at them ferociously. Gritting her teeth, Akane decided to count this as training. Reinforcing her skin with ki she forced the nettles and prickly spruce branches to slide off her harmlessly. The makeshift bikinis were holding somehow. Occasional bears and mooses were jumping from their path.

They held this tempo for two hours straight, until Akane felt like her feet pumped full of ki had turned into something like car tires. She had lost count of how many sharp branches she pulverized underfoot in their mad dash.

At last, they had reached their destination. The place where the token should have been. The girls strayed around, having momentarily lost their direction, until they realized that that hollow oak over there, humming dangerously with wild bees, was it.

The plan was simple. Akane rushed forward carrying Ami to safety while Ranma smashed the oak to bits with a ki blast. She then grabbed the token from the mess — it's a good thing not even honey sticks to it — and spent the next few minutes zig-zagging around the forest: the bees felt horribly offended at her vandalism.

But finally she lost them, thanks to her greater endurance. Ranma had difficulty finding her way back, it was a good thing Akane thought of hollering the redhead's name from time to time.

"Finally," Ranma said with a breath of relief as she placed the seven quicksilvery orange-sized balls in a row on the grass. They were green, reflecting the forest. "We got all of these 'dragonballs'. Ami?"

"The medallion has shut off," she replied. "I have no idea what to do."

"Well, and?" Ranma shifted the closest token with her foot. Then she rolled them into a heap, so that they were all touching. No reaction. "What now?"

(シーンブレイク)

2008 .. June 15, 2014. Translated July 26, 2014

 **Ding!** Tropes unlocked:  
Improvised Clothes

 **Author's notes:**

 **1**  
Basically, the object is accelerating in such a way that had it lost thrust at any given moment, it would still pass through the fixed destination point in unpowered flight. Naturally, this is inefficient in both fuel consumption (an elliptic transfer orbit is cheaper), and time (a constant thrust spiral transfer orbit is faster given the same constant thrust).

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— Crystal  
— Orphus users (102 bugs so far)  
— Konsaki  
— LawOhki  
— Orphus users (76 bugs so far)  
— ryuumon, who not just pointed my mistakes, but provided many corrections to my style. On a side note, I'm hitting a level cap of sorts again, unable to do better than a hundred plus mistakes per chapter. It's obvious that translation _to_ ·a language should be made by a native speaker, _from_ ·a language that is foreign for them.  
— Konsaki  
— LawOhki  
— Orphus users (108 bugs so far)


	23. In Your Face, Downer Ending!

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled**

 **Chapter 23  
In Your Face, Downer Ending!**

 _This here is the real last chapter. The next two ones consist mostly of flashbacks to the times where all the heroes were still alive._

 _The author._

(シーンブレイク)

Against their expectations, there was no glow from the silvery orbs, nothing at all.

"Was everything in vain?" Akane whispered. "It can't be!"

"Well, maybe we have to say something?" suggested Ranma. "Like, come out, Shen-Long... I mean, Ahs-Ahcsh. Or some oth—"

The world around them blinked imperceptibly. They found themselves on the flat top of some mountain, under a different sky, in the center of a great cuphole ringed by mountains so high they were taking up a large part of the sky, most of their sides white with snow. The sun had jumped half-way across the sky, indicating they had been transported far.

"What the?！" Ranma shouted out taking a defensive stance. Akane did the same, feeling the same sort of terrible wrongness.

Ami hastily opened the medallion, only to stare at the screen in disbelief. "Access denied? But why..." She tried different keys but the medallion was remaining locked. The short-haired girl looked up feeling an oppressive, leaden weight on her spirit. Something in this world — and she was positive they had been transported into a different world — something here was seriously wrong. She regretted she didn't possess Rei's spiritual senses.

And the silvery "dragonballs" had disappeared. Or, maybe, simply hadn't been transported along with the girls?

"I don't feel my ki," Ranma said tersely as she stood back to back with Akane surveying their surroundings. "Do you?"

"I don't," Akane replied, fear creeping into her voice. "Nothing. It's like that gray world all over again!"

Unlike Ami, the two martial artists were feeling the wrongness of this world full force. Zero ki factor is a terrifying thing. Half-blind, half-deaf from the loss of their extra senses, they were helpless, brought down to mortal level, all their training worse than useless. There was that oppressive feeling they have been hoping to never experience again: like a mountain, no a continent was suspended just centimeters above their heads.

"You think it's a trap?" Akane asked just to break the dread-filled silence. They posed an easy target now: even Kunou, had he kept his ki, wold be a serious treat to them. All their hard-earned, well-honed reflexes turned into a burden, not designed for such impossible conditions.

"Why the hell would they make such an convoluted trap?" Ranma replied doubtfully. "When you have to go through so much to get caught in it?"

"For extra ambitious Ahs-Lords grabbing for more power?" Ami suggested, making everyone feel even worse.

"We'll know soon enough," Ranma summed up fatalistically.

The tense silence stretched on, with only the wind whispering in the rockslides.

"I suppose they could simply leave us here," Ami suggested. "I have a feeling that being in this world slowly deadens your soul. If we stay here longer than we can withstand it... I have to shut up, don't I?" She took a heavy, shuddering breath.

Their perspective was ranging from bad to worse.

Soon however, their waiting was interrupted by a silvery flash some meters away.

The girls held their breath in hope and apprehension.

A tiny dot of mirror sheen grew rapidly, unfolding like multi-dimensional origami... to turn into the painfully familiar form of that invincible knight!

Hope died.

Here, in the center of his power he was simply standing in the air without any jet crutches. His very presence crashed onto the girls, pressing them down. It felt as if that deadening ki-void had just tripled. Even Ami felt something in her heart go numb.

Akane gritted her teeth. Their chances just dropped from an ant underfoot to an amoeba in Gojira's line of fire.

The knight crossed his arms... Then suddenly greeted them in passable Japanese:

"Seventh level user Ahs-Amy-Waters, seventh level user Ahs-Scarlet-Skywalker, seventh level user Ahs-Anarchy-Maid. I, Ahs-Ahcsh, greet you. By overcoming a path full of obstacles you have earned a chance to meet... me personally..." The knight suddenly stuttered and fell silent.

"Yeah, yeah, glad to see you too," Ranma growled. It was taking everything she had just to keep standing upright under the force of his presence. "Long time no see and all that."

Who would have thought that everything would end so unfairly! That the mysterious level zero Ahs-user would turn out to be that very same enemy who had not flattened them only by miracle!

The knight descended smoothly to stand on the ground, then walked up to the girls looking at each in turn — or, more precisely, turning his head enclosed in a solid long-snouted helmet. He moved as if he couldn't believe his eyes.

"Uh..." he continued uncertainly. "Aren't you, by any chance, the protectors of that world, of twentieth century's nineties I believe, whose failed efforts ended with a grandiose violation of continuum...?" He glanced around them. "Well, western Syberia, snow, elemental magic of life, crazy uniforms with very short skirts..."

"We are," Ranma replied challengingly. "So what?"

"But... Erm... How could you be Ahs-users?" the knight asked in total confusion.

"We..." Ami faltered when he 'stared' at her. "We were suffused with genetic material of a monster who was an Ahs-user... Level three, I think... Stomach juice, was trying to dissolve us..."

Throwing his arms up, Ahs-Ahcsh erupted with an expressive string of expletives. Well, the girls thought these were expletives, judging by his tone, as they weren't familiar with those languages. From time to time one could discern him mentioning the DNA-based authentication system in English. Colorfully and expressively.

The girls were taken aback: his behavior was very unlike an evil and invincible overlord.

Finally, Ahs-Ahcsh ran out of steam, all his vitriol spent towards the unfeeling heavens. "I see," he grumbled. "Of course. All this time I kept searching for you in the system like a fool, having filtered out all users first. That's a.." He followed with yet another tirade in an unknown language, this one short and weary.

"Searching? What for?" Ranma asked cautiously. "Not to finish us off, I hope?"

Ahs-Ahcsh started. "Well, umm..." he began sheepishly. "You see... I was trying to save your world. The most practical method is redirecting all energies onto myself, then letting the local protectors of life banish me. Well, erm, it's usually much quicker and easier to feign being an unknown and terrible enemy than trying to arrange things peacefully."

"So that entire battle was a bluff?！" Ranma asked in disbelief. "What the hell was it about, then?"

"Well, to simplify, I was trying to detach your universe from the system. It became connected to Ahs by accident... No, because of one of the users abusing his duties feloniously. You probably don't know what a disaster it was!"

"But what does this connection entail?" Ami asked. "And what are its full consequences? I tried to figure it out using the library included in our medallion, but information there is haphazard and—."

"You never could," the knight interrupted her. "The system limits the thought processes of all living things in its confines. Understanding its mechanics is fundamentally impossible for you."

The girls boggled. They had been brainwashed without them noticing!

"So only I possess the freedom of thought in this multiverse," the knight continued, missing their reaction. "The main function of Ahs is saving dying worlds by putting them in stasis. It keeps them from reaching their certain doom, but stops evolution forever."

"Dying in what sense?" Ranma asked him. "Our universe didn't look like it was on its deathbed!"

"That's the true horror!" the knight exclaimed throwing his hands up in emotional agitation. "Not only wasn't your universe dying, it does have multitudes of inhabited planets beside Earth! In fact, your universe is extremely densely populated. The Milky Way alone has tens of thousands of inhabited planets, that's more than all universes of Ahs combined!"

"But still, what is a 'dying world'?" Ami asked trying to get some answer.

"As you probably know," Ahs-Ahcsh began in such tone as if he was repeating a boring lecture he had grown annoyed with, "the self-actualization density of a universe consisting of only dead matter approaches zero. While the presence of sentient life raises the self-actualization density above the Haske threshold that separates really existing universes from the set of ones that exist only potentially. On the other hand, the last spark of sapient life waning leads to degradation of that universe from a really existing object to an imaginary one. That's what I meant by using the term 'dying world'..." He then hastily corrected himself. "I mean, from the point of view of an outside observer located in a different universe, the universe sinking below the Khaske threshold ceases to exist. That stretch of time, when the universe is still above the threshold but is approaching it inexorably according its own temporal laws, such a universe could be called 'dying'. As the vast majority of such universes do only possess a single inhabited planet I simplified the term to 'dying world'... So far, these were variations of the planet Earth populated by humans or humanoid demons, but in theory it could be any other planet populated by anything up to a swarm of sentient slime. Uh, did I explain it clearly enough?"

"I, for one, didn't get this mumbo-jumbo at all," Ranma grumbled, frowning.

"Well, I mean..." Akane hesitated trying to put the same opinion in polite words.

"So you are saying that an universe ceases to exist if all sentient life in it dies out?" Ami fashioned the distilled point of his tirade as a question, but she was telling it for her comrades' sake.

"Um... Didn't I just tell the same thing?" the knight replied with puzzlement.

Ranma felt a rising ire aimed at their ham-handed and tongue-tied wannabe benefactor, helped by the fact that his presence was still pressing down on her mind like a great weight, trying to turn her into a mindless vegetable.

"Yes, yes, of course," Ami agreed hastily. She wondered why it was so hard to think, like her brain was wrapped in cotton. It was hard to put thoughts together. "So you say, only dying worlds should be connected..."

"Exactly!" Ahs-Ahcsh perked up, he looked ready to discuss his favorite topic for hours. "The system absorbs such universes, usually near the very threshold or on the way towards it, and makes them part of itself. The universe doesn't cease to exist but is subjected to eternal stasis... I mean, the derivatives from the functions of the sentient life do. The basic matter keeps functioning according to its cosmological—"

"How does that concern our universe?" Ranma interrupted him irritably.

"Your universe..." The knight suddenly lost his zeal. "It, ahem, suffered from illegitimate actions of a privileged user. The shame is system-wide... Did you, by any chance, see what became of him? I tried to track him but his line is cut at a continuum fault..."

"He was sucked into a portal," Akane squeezed out. She too was straining to hold off the mental pressure.

"Then Sailor Moon did something to the portal making it collapse," added Ranma.

"His account had been suspended before that," Ami added. "For a hundred years, for overdrafting his quota."

"So he got himself killed..." Ahs-Ahcsh drawled. "A pity. I was so hoping to use him to show the other users how utterly wrong such violations are... To make a lasting example of him..."

The girls shivered involuntarily: his voice was so full of sincere disappointment.

"So how we..." Gritting her teeth, Ranma fell to one knee under the crushing pressure. "How do we... disconnect our world now..." Was the pressure increasing?

"As I un... derstand... it..." Ami started stuttering. "The merge... with Ahs... has negative... nega..." Her eyes glassed over, her pupils shrunk to pinpricks as she froze.

"Hey... What's wrong with you!" Ahs-Ahcsh cried out in alarm. "Hey! Why are you so green! Hey!"

"Nngh... Can't... hold..." Akane croaked out, convulsing. Then she too froze, still like a statue.

"Enough... Pressing... pal," Ranma squeezed out gritting her teeth. She then froze too, bent over and deathly still.

Ahs-Ahcsh was flitting between them in panic but the girls weren't responding. A string of saliva was leaking from Ami's open mouth.

"What a clutz I am‼！" he yelled when he finally took a moment to look around. "We are in the very focus of the root world...! Oh disaster..." He made some hasty gestures. A transparent bubble surrounded the mountaintop making the crushing pressure go away. Regaining their ability to think and move, the girls slumped to the ground like wet noodles.

"What was that?" Ami asked weakly.

"Some sort of ki suppression field," Ranma replied focusing her efforts on standing up. "Suppressing ki so strongly it's life threatening."

"Well, it's something like that," Ahs-Ahch agreed, beside himself with embarrassment. Despite being utterly faceless, his emotions were clear and apparent from his body language. "Please forgive my oversight, I failed to notice that the tokens had transported you into the root world instead of summoning me to you..."

"What do you need that ki-suppressing field for?" Akane asked as she stood up and dusted herself off. The pressure was gone, but the feeling of her own ki hadn't fully returned.

"It's not a field per se," Ahs-Ahsch explained. "It's the typical effect of Ahs on the properties of reality. Here, in the root world, it's just particularly strong. Two magnitudes higher than the system average."

"A typical effect?" Ranma asked with disbelief. "So Ahs is some sort of ki-vampire, then?"

"No, not at all," Ahs-Ahsch corrected her. "What you call ki is... Simply speaking, it's exactly the effect of highly organized life that allows an universe to exist. A typical universe outside Ahs, I mean. Ki... Or Qui or Chi, or Force... Every world does have its own name for it, but that doesn't change its nature. It warps space in one of the immaterial dimensions. This way, life warps reality making it suitable for life to exist. But when Ahs absorbs a universe it provides conditions for its existence. In other words, it takes the place of ki. As well as its higher order manifestation, the magic. Ahs and ki aren't completely opposite, otherwise life couldn't possibly exist inside the system. But there is a degree of overlap, causing conflict. You have probably noticed that ki and magic are limited in most of the Ahs worlds. It's just a side effect. But here, in the root world," He gestured at the mountain ring surrounding them, "this side effect is so strong that life cannot exist without the support of... By tradition, we call it 'generator of artificial souls' even if this name is misleading. But the generator only helps the life forms that were born here."

"In short, or souls would have suffocated here without ki," Ranma summed up gloomily.

"So what do we have to do to prevent our world suffering the same fate?" Akane returned the conversation back to track. "And where should we search for our Princess...? We were hoping you'd help us locate her. And Sailor Pluto, of course. I hope she is alive."

"Is your princess a girl with her hair in two long ponytails who functions as a local god?" Ahs-Ahsch inquired.

Ranma and Akane boggled at him, but Ami had clear memories of both the great kaboom over the Arctic and her being resurrected from the dead. She nodded affirmatively: "Yes, that's her."

"Then the situation is as bad as I had feared." Ahs-Ahsch began pacing nervously. "In usual circumstances, when a sapient being is transported into Ahs their thread of fate in the external world either breaks, which looks like a sudden death from that world's perspective, or rebounds. In which case it looks like nothing has happened, while the person transported into Ahs becomes a perfect clone. Either way, any traces of contact with Ahs vanish, because Ahs does possess immensely more rigid temporal structure than the external universes do. Using this loophole to stage untraceable abductions... What's most vexing, the slimy bastard was in good standing... No, I'll definitely make an inspection. I will be visiting the bastards suddenly, make them shake in fear."

"But then a copy of Usagi would have remained in our world," Ami objected trying to get back to track. Ahs-Ahsch's thought process surely possessed an impressive ability to wander.

" _If_ ·she was simply abducted by that lowlife." Ahs-Ahsch shook his head. "Alas, it's not that simple. Your leader has tried to use her reality warping powers, at exactly the level of a lesser god... That conflicted with the perfectly rigid structure of Ahs. The system doesn't just resist any deformations, it draws resources across time... In fact, any external influence will be met with the total energy of all universes Ahs consists of, throughout all the billions of years of their existence."

Ami's eyes grew wide. "Then, an amount of energy necessary for overcoming—"

"No," Ahs-Ahsch interrupted her. "There could be no overcoming, the state of the system is binary. Either there would be no effect, or Ahs would be destroyed entirely and retroactively, as if it never existed. But that's pure theory, I don't know any elder gods powerful enough... To think of it, Tzinch probably could do that by subversion, weak as he is. But he regards Ahs as a human would regard a pile of dung, to say he prefers to stay far away from it. Hmm, who else... Yog-Sothoth had called Ahs, I quote, a boil on his ass, then refused further contact... Well, there's no one else to think of."

"But then what did happen there, back in Syberia..." Ami frowned, not comprehending. These names meant nothing to her.

"It's simple," the knight explained. "When I told you about impossibility of any effect I meant changing laws and properties of reality. Such trivial, physical things as blowing planets up or fracturing spacetime aren't affected. And that was exactly what had happened. The reality warping powers of your Princess refracted into purely material forces discharging as a transfer or copying the surrounding landscape into different worlds. Among these, the shard containing your Princess was transported inside Ahs thus embedding her line rigidly into Ahs because your world's temporal structure at that point of time had already been frozen."

"Stop beating around the bush." Ranma scowled. "Just tell us the important things!"

"How could I," Ahs-Ahsch reproached her. "You could miss some vital detail!"

"Damn nitpicker," Ranma grumbled under her breath. But the bugger proved to have a very good hearing. He erupted with a whole lecture on impermissibility of hasty decisions without preliminary analysis of all collected facts. The lecture was mind-numbingly boring, Ranma was growing irritable... Only Ami's valiant efforts allowed her to curb the beginning squabble and return the conversation back to track.

"..thus," Ahs-Ahsch concluded a mind-blowingly convoluted digression into theory, "your Princess is either immortal, or is reborn in a string of reincarnations, or is destined to rule the world, or any combination of the above. The fact is, her world-line is incredibly strong so any attempts to cut the fabric of your universe again are as hopeless as trying to carefully cut gauze that has a steel cable sewn into it while all you have are nail scissors."

"Were you telling us all that just to say you can't help?！" Ranma exploded.

"No," Ahs-Ahsch shook his head, emitting a heavy sigh. "Just to demonstrate to you that you can't help either."

"Why's that?" Ranma wasn't going to take this lying face down.

"Because you three are a part of the system," he replied sharply. "Whatever you do, Ahs is looming over your shoulder. The laws of Ahs act through you, backing all your actions with its full power to resist reality warping. For example— Uh, I'd better not... Back to our analogy, any attempts both by me or by you to repair the fate of your world will end like an attempt to cut gauze with a power-shovel. Not only would you ruin everything, you won't even scratch the steel cable of your Princess' world-line... Forget it, it's hopeless. You are a part of the same perfectly rigid structure and cannot be separated from it—"

"All right, we're screwed, I got that." Ranma was grim, but not giving up. "But could you at least return Usagi home, maybe someone else can change the past—"

"You do not understand! Her reality warping powers are locked and will remain locked while a part of her world-line goes through Ahs. To change this you have to change the past. To change the past you have to disconnect your world from Ahs. But it cannot be disconnected while her line goes through Ahs! _There is no solution_. Believe me, I tried... I'm sorry but all your efforts were futile."

"Is it impossible in principle?" Ami asked him. "Or is the cost prohibitive?"

"Well..." Ahs-Ahcsh sighed. "I could force the disconnect, but... Would you be satisfied with a hole in spacetime in place of your galaxy, with everything dear to you irrevocably destroyed?"

"No," Akane agreed. "We wouldn't want that. But maybe—"

"I'm telling you, there is no solution," Ahs-Ahch contimued hammering. "The vicious circle of perfect principles cannot be broken however—" Suddenly, he fell silent with a start. He then raised furious activity making gestures so fast his hands were blurring. "Aw, bugger!" he swore. A loud click, his form blinked and the motions of his hands blurred into a haze accompanied by powerful, high-pitched buzzing. Whatever acceleration technique the Lord of Ahs was using, it was operpowering the air resistance with brute force, unlike the ki techniques that bend the physical world to their will softly, allowing to make supersonic dashes without disturbing a blade of grass.

The girls cautiously stepped back. Another click and the sound was cut off by a transparent bubble surrounding Ahs-Ahch. His form was twitching and flickering inside, blurred with speed. Even his head movements felt like flickering.

Several seconds of wary waiting later Ahs-Ahsch dropped his acceleration with a loud double click.

"Three hours wasted, and still it's no use," he said with frustration as he let his hands drop.

"No use what?" Akane asked tensely. Could it be that...

"Oh," Ahs-Ahsch wawed it off with irritation. "I was hoping to avoid involving myself, which would have allowed to return your Princess home as a person without her powers. But now even that is impossible." He made a short gesture making a mirror statue appear beside him out of thin air. It was the very familiar form of Usagi who stumbled while running madly, frozen mid-fall. Her arms awkwardly outstretched, her mouth opened in a silent scream. The pigtails were trailing behind her like streamers.

The statuary also included a huge maw with fangs several inches long. It was hanging in the air right behind Usagi's back, opened wide in a final lunge. It was cut off from its owner by an imaginary sphere surrounding the statuary.

"All my precautions wasted," Ahs-Ahsch explained. "I had to involve myself, there was no other choice."

"Usagi-chan!" Akane exclaimed.

"What is this?" Ami asked.

"Temporal stasis," Ahs-Ahsch explained.

"So she didn't just turn into a metallic statue?" Ranma asked.

"Of course not!" Ahs-Ahsch retorted, offended by such incompetence. "An object in stasis cannot interact with the surrounding reality. Any effect is reflected at the border of the frozen continuum, both mechanical and radiative. It's a perfect mirror, thus the look. By the way, this is my favorite method of dealing with dissidents. I don't harm them, and they too can't harm anything either... Best of all, investigation could be postponed indefinitely, even for centuries. But enough! Are you going to catch or not?"

"To catch?" Ranma asked.

"Well, of course." Ahs-Ahsch crossed his arms with irritation. "Velocities are conserved. I unfreeze her, she'll plow the ground face-first, with the predator fragment hitting her in the back teeth-first. It was catching up to her."

"Oh!" Ranma got it. "Come on, Akane. I catch her, you hold the maw," she said with joy that she finally could do something useful.

The girls took their positions. Ranma grabbed Usagi around the waist — she was hard and utterly unmovable — while Akane got a good grip at the fangs putting one foot forward so that she'd be twirled around by the hefty chunk of an unknown animal redirecting it away from her comrades. "I'm ready," she confirmed.

Ahs-Ahch made a dramatic gesture of snapping his fingers. Usagi gained color, weight, a sizable speed and overpowering loudness: "..N'TIMINEDIBLESOMEONEHELPMOMMYAHHHH‼‼"

Faltering under such a sonic blast, Akane barely held the massive maw. She twirled like a top when the slippery fangs tore free from her hands. Separated from its owner, the biting organ snapped shut, almost taking her fingers off, then flew away accompanied with twisting spurts of blood. To her great irritation, almost half of the thick, hot liquid landed on Akane making her look like a horror flick victim. Ranma ducked nimbly, managing to both catch Usagi and dodge the spurts, so that not a drop landed on them. The blond shrunk in her arms, her eyes squeezed shut, waiting for the end to come.

"Hey..." the redhead began tentatively. "You are, like... You're saved."

Usagi's only response was silent trembling.

"Usagi-chan," Ami carefully touched the shaken girl's shoulder. "It's gone, you are safe."

"That's right," Akane grumbled stepping up to them.

"Wah!" The blond jumped frantically up looking around. Then she hit everyone present with a second sonic blast: "Ahhh‼！ It mauled Akane-chan‼！ Someone help her now‼！"

"I'm all righ, Usagi-chan," Akane calmed her down. "It's not mine, it's all from the one that tried to eat you." She shivered in disgust. Considering her outfit consisting of a make-shift bikini... Attempts to wipe the tacky, quickly thickening mess from her skin only led to smearing it around and getting her hands dirty. "Yeech, it's disgusting. I have to wash as soon as possible."

"Or wait until it dries up and falls off on its own," Ranma added cynically. "You should have made an effort to dodge."

"Ami-chan! Ranko-chan! Akane-chan!" The blond shed tears of joy hugging them in turn. "I've been missing you so much!"

Ranma grumbled something unter her breath at 'Ranko-chan' but never raised objection: that would be petty and out of place. Usagi was so haggard, worn and scratched... It was apparent these four days hadn't been easy on her.

"Well, how are you? How are others doing?" the saved one was babbling. "Can we go home now...?"

"I'm afraid no one of you can return now," Ahs-Ahsch injected in a tone usually reserved for "By the way, my dear, I'm afraid I somewhat ran your cat over while parking..."

"Giku!" Usagi jumped away as she noticed him.

"Don't be afraid," Ranma reassured her. "He is kind of on our side. Pretty useless, though..."

"You should know," Ahs-Ahsch said, offended. "I spent three months searching for a solution to your problem!" He wilted. "There's no such solution. It's hopeless."

"We cannot return?" Usagi asked, her joy evaporating rapidly. "But why...? Mamo-chan is waiting for me there, the others—"

"You see," Ahs-Ahsch replied, "your world-lines became firmly embedded in the spacetime of the system. In their case," He pointed at the three skimpily dressed girls, "because of becoming registered users slash components of the system. In your case," He pointed at the amputated maw lying aside, making Usagi shudder, "because of my personal intervention... Whatever the reason, the result is the same. You are now... Or, more precisely, your past is, an inseparable part of Ahs. But changing the past as I had mentioned, is fundamentally impossible."

Ami sighed. He was going into the thicket of theory again.

"So, we can't return?" Usagi asked, non-comprehending.

"Why? You can." Ahs-Ahch forestalled her cry of joy with a raised hand. "But your world will then stay a part of the system forever, chained by the fact of your existence. Especially yours." He cast a measuring look at Usagi. "You are too powerful a key factor, your world-line is invulnerable against the manipulations necessary to disconnecting. I hope everyone here realizes that that would mean your world falling into endless decay and eternal stagnation? Ahs is far from being a rose-colored place.

"So we have to stay here to save our world?" Usagi half-asked, half-stated, her voice crestfallen. She was already feeling heart ache from being separated from her loved one forever. "All right..." Her voice wavered. "I agree."

"Is that really necessary?" Ranma inquired with hostile disbelief. One thing was clear to her: whatever had locked her curse was a part of Ahs. If she stayed here, she stayed a girl forever.

"Usually, that would not be enough," Ahs-Ahsch crossed his arms. "However, as I recall, your colleague did have an idea — an utterly crazy idea, I should say — how to make everything right. Oh, of course." He made a complex gesture making a woman in baggy clothing appear beside him, a bristle of green hair barely there on the dark skin of her shaven head. "I couldn't let you meet before, as I was trying to avoid my direct intervention, but as it is no use now..."

"Setsuna-san!" Usagi exclaimed rushing toward her.

"Oof!" The tall woman hissed in pain when the blond drunk with joy held her tight, almost managing to twirl her around despite their size difference. "Ca.. careful, Usagi-chan, not all my burns have healed yet."

"I'm sorry!" Usagi jumped back, abashed.

"Never mind." Setsuna smiled at her, in turn hugging the blond carefully with her bandaged arms.

Ranma and Ami were glad to meet their comrade in arms, but Akane's reaction was odd: by some reason she blushed and started fidgeting, her eye twitching. Ranma cast a cautious side glance at her, then surreptitiously shifted sideways, away from her spouse.

"I'll leave explaining the details of the plan to Mei-oh-setsuna," Ahs-Ash said looking at them in turn. I'm afraid... Well, on the other hand..." He fell silent.

"So we will really have to stay here?" Ranma asked Setsuna.

"I, In your place, would be worrying if we could really separate the worlds," the woman replied with sudden harshness.

Ranma lowered her eyes, ashamed. He had sworn on his honor to lay down his life for... Yeah, dying is one thing, but getting stuck as a girl for no one knows how long... Maybe, forever. This was a sore spot of her. Only the closeness and support of her wife were allowing her to hold on so well.

"I do not understand," Ami said, frowning. "How do you plan to disconnect the worlds if any attempt to affect our world by any of us or Ahs-Ahsch would only result in the bond strengthening? Shouldn't you change the past for that? But as changing the past is impossible while the worlds are connected..."

"In the bounds of the mortal world that is true," Setsuna replied with a sad and somehow detached smile that made Usagi's heart skip a beat. "But no time, space nor inter-universal barriers pose an obstacle for a soul." She surveyed the girls. "Listen and pay attention. I can break the connection by raising a wave in the past of our world that will lead to time peeling into layers. The events that had started it all — the demon attack and the rest — will be torn out of the fabric of spacetime like a frozen chunk of flesh from a wound. Time... Normal time, not the static mockery they have of it here in Ahs, is able to heal such wounds. The past will change flowing over the gap, the flow of history will change its course slightly. I hope we all will survive, without any memories of the events. Because these trials would have never existed for us of our world."

"So we can return?" Usagi exclaimed in joy.

"No," Setsuna retorted sharply. "We of our world are the other we. Those who will never learn of the existence of Ahs. We of here will remain here forever, copies of people from a world this universe will never interact with again."

Usagi wilted.

"Could there be other way?" Ranma wasn't giving up. "Well, at least clone that twit of hers too, she'll waste away without him!" She pointed at Usagi.

"No," Ahs-Ahsch replied this time. "Any attempt to copy anyone in any direction now requires my intervention, which would cause the plan to fail. Condemning your world to eternity in this hell of ours... Don't even ask." He looked at Usagi stricken with grief, then he suggested tentatively: "Well, we could disintegrate her to end her suffering, as her copy will remain somewhere anyway..."

"Damn it," Ranma grumbled.

"Don't be so down." Setsuna smiled at them encouragingly. "You four are an excellent team. You'll be able to find yourself a new home and new goal in life. You can take on anyting."

"Wait!" Akane grew alarmed. "There are five of us! And what's with 'you'?"

"Setsuna-san..." Usagi whispered. "No, simply Setsuna, my faithful mentor and close friend... Tell me that when you were talking about souls you weren't..." She choked on a bitter lump in her throat.

"She opened my eyes," Ahs-Ahsch grumbled, turning away with embarrassment. "I had been sure that souls are just a myth, blinded by materialistic dogmas. But if that meta-overspace really exists... And she is 150percent sure it exists... Ah, what should I say." He threw his arms up in frustration. "I just found my best conversation partner of the last fifteen years, and now..."

"It's time to say our farewells," Setsuna said.

"Wait, what farewells!" Ranma objected as she finally got it. "It's not fair! Girls, tell her...! We can't, just after finding you... There should be a way do solve everything without killing yourself! Do you hear me!"

Setsuna just shook her head. "It's my destiny, Ranma-kun. To stand in twilight between this world and the next one guarding the peace of the living... A destiny I can't escape even where the very concept of destiny loses its meaning."

Ranma grit her teeth. "I don't believe this bullshit! There should be other way! Even if it takes us twenty years—"

"We don't have twenty years," Ahs-Ahsch interrupted her. "A month tops, then the worlds will merge so deeply that I won't have enough mental capacity to separate them. The system is theoretically omnipotent, but while I keep my nature, my mind remains limited, not so far beyond human."

"So think of something if you are so smart!" the redhead wasn't giving up, abandoning her last pretenses of politeness. "Come on, you can spend as long as you want in accelerated time!"

"No." He shook his head. 'Everything I could come up with, I already did. I can control my mind and analyze it in detail, so no doubts here... There is no solution, any further research is meaningless."

"Indeed." Setsuna sighed closing her eyes. "Dawdling here means only inflicting unneeded pain and losing dignity... Are you ready?"

"For a long time," Ahs-Ahsch said with quiet sadness as he made a gesture. "Disintegration set. Just give the word."

Ranma's eyes widened in sudden realization. "Stop! Don't you dare kill her‼！"

"Everyone has a right to decide if they have to do away with their life," the allmighty lord replied quietly. "It's not in my power to stop them. That is one of the eternal limits I put on myself."

"Or are you suggesting I have to slit my throat with a rusty dull knife?" Setsuna asked with terrifying calmness.

The redhead fell to her knees growling and hitting the ground so hard it made her knuckles bleed.

"Logically speaking," Ami injected trying to console her, "our lives are expendable now. As reality is going to split leaving our originals at home alive, dying here and now would only mean losing a few days, not our entire lives."

"You are talking bullshit!" the redhead snapped back angrily. "Whatever copies are out there, your life is your one and only!"

Usagi was crying openly. "If... Some time..."

"There are things even I, the soldier of the beyond, can't know," the emerald-haired woman replied sadly. "But... maybe."

"Forgive me please!" Akane hollered, suddenly falling to her knees in front of Setsuna and bowing so deeply her head hit the rocks. "I have wronged you! In my ignorance I have badmouthed you! My honor is stained forever! I'm not worthy of your forgiveness!"

"Don't be like that," Setsuna replied gently. "Akane-chan, once again you are making make a mountain out of a mole-hill. Compared to everything good you did it's not even worth mentioning."

Akane just sniffed wetly in return.

Ranma was frowning tensely, her fists clenched. She was trying to think of something.

"Don't, Ranma-kun," Setsuna said. Her voice was beginning to grow detached. "You won't find any other way. There are moments when you have to accept the inevitable. That is its own kind of strength."

Ranma sighed heavily as she forced herself to relax. "Excuse me, but I never learned to accept the inevitable. And never will." She smiled thinly. "That's the kind of guy I am."

"That's a strength too," Setsuna nodded. "But enough. Farewell my friends, we will never meet again in this life." Her face reflected tranquillity, she was standing unmoving, with her eyes closed.

"Farewell," Ami whispered.

"Farewell," Akane sniffed.

"Farewell," Ranma squeezed out. Men do not cry.

"Farewell," Usagi said quietly. "But I promise... I will find..." She fell silent burying her face in her hands.

"Farewell, my best conversation partner," Ahs-Ahsch sighed and snapped his fingers. A blinding flash flared in place of Setsuna. An instant later only a puff of fine ashes was rising to the sky, dispersing from sight.

The girls stood in silence for a long time. Ahs-Ahsch was making convoluted gestures. Finally he broke the mournful silence: "It's over, detaching succeeded. Ahs ceased to exist relatively to your universe. It went so smoothly too. I hope... I hope your counterparts there are alive and well. We'll never know that for sure, though.

"I believe in them," Usagi said quietly but with conviction. "They made it. Our world is saved." She sighed with immense relief, deflating. Akane had do support her. Slumping, she started crying quietly but so bitterly one's heart ached from one glance at her. Akane and Ami tried to soothe the crying girl as best as they could. Ranma was fidgeting awkwardly, unable to help. Only she had heard Ahs-Ahch muttering under his breath "I suppose I am lucky to be unable to understand such feelings..."

And just like that, it was over. The world was saved, the loved ones safe.

But the victory tasted like ashes.

Ranma was the first to break the mournful silence. "So let me get this straight," she said. "It was Setsuna alone who saved the world, right? She did it regardless of us, right? All our efforts resulted only in saving a copy of Usagi who is now condemned to forever being stuck in this hellhole of a multiverse, just as we are. And who doesn't even want to live. Right?"

"Correct," Ahs-Asch replied. "With time, you will learn to accept futility, young one. For example, I'd like to let you out of Ahs into some external universe. But any attempt to do that would only result in a disjointed chunk of that universe becoming a part of Ahs. It's a lot like the legend of king Midas: _everything_ ·I touch turns into more Ahs. And don't you try getting out on your own. You share the same curse now."

"I am not going to resign myself to futility!" Ranma shouted angrily, glaring at him with her fists clenched. "When everything possible is done, do the impossible!"

Ami was consoling Usagi. Akane was watching her husband, transfixed. It was exactly like when he, in his Sailor Sol form, stood face to face with Sailor Galaxia. The golden Senshi had been preaching about futility as well. And she too seemed invincible at the time.

Something alien to this world blossomed in Akane's soul. It was hope.

"I told you," Ahs-Asch was droning stubbornly. "Knowing my own mind and its limits I know... precisely..." He fell silent, his head tilted. "Isaac Azimov, Escape?"

"What running away?" Ranma asked with confusion: the last word was said in English.

"Oh! When translated to Japanese, the title of that story means 'a way out of a situation'. But no matter! Let me check one _impossible_ ·idea..."

Saying that, he went busy, the speed of his accelerated gestures making the air buzz. Just like when he saved Usagi.

That easily? Ranma wanted to say. Then she checked herself: stop tempting fate!

Ahs-Asch dropped his acceleration with a loud click. "It exists. There _is_ ·a loophole. As expected, all these barriers are only impassable for material objects... There's so much I have to study!"

"Perfect!" Ranma grinned predatorily. "There's a catch, of course?"

"Alas, there is." Ahs-Asch made a helpless gesture. "You can go outside, but only as disembodied souls. Before meeting your colleague, who isn't with us anymore, I wouldn't even have tried this approach. But... As I realized that sometimes even the impossible is possible, I went further than the point where my calculations had ran into a dead end before. In short, your magic is the way to salvation, as it is anchored to your souls rather than bodies. In certain conditions that would allow you to... generate new bodies at the destination point. Of course there's a risk that you fail to do that, which equals death. That's the first catch. The second catch is that this would only work for one specific world I had ejected from the system by force, approximately a year ago."

Wrapping her arm around Usagi's shoulder, Ami turned her head to look at them and started listening.

"That world was quite atypical," Ahs-Ahch continued explaining. "There were no apocalyptic events, no devastating wars, no pestilence, no famine. A typical, standard Earth of age somewhere around the end of the World War Two. It's the point in the time where that world got merged with Ahs. As far as I can tell, it got merged accidentally, due to a random convergence... Yeah, sometimes it's that stupid. No portals had formed in the process, so when I finally found time for it in my busy schedule, almost a century had passed there..." He sighed shaking his head. "What a sorry sight it was. When I went there, it was the year 2055, the middle of the twenty-first century. And imagine this: they were still using vacuum-tube computers and had barely reached the Moon."

"But how is that possible?" Ami was puzzled. "The progress—"

"You have seen your share of examples of what Ahs does to progress," Ahs-Ahch replied venomously. "Why are you asking? Any progress ultimately leads to people understanding the system and defeating it. So the protective temporal circuit keeps weeding out, mindlessly but thoroughly, all the branches of the future leading to such an outcome. A man who should have had invented the transistor suffers a heart attack or his thoughts wander. The physicists who should have had made a breakthrough have their budget cut down by an incongruous 'accident'. Or they die from leukemia caused by a 'sudden' but statistically plausible gamma-ray burst. There really is no hope for progress... It's like a tree pressing against an invincible glass ceiling. It twists and bends, partially wilting. It grows to the sides. But it can never grow upwards as it should."

"So what happened to that world?" Ranma returned him back to topic. "I suppose you _had_ ·found a way to free it?"

"Of course! Seeing such injustice, I took action immediately," Ahs-Asch explained. "It was hard work, but I found a loophole that let me eject that world from the system. Its past cannot be changed, but its future became free, undetermined. Considering the difference of the gradients, a century or two should have passed there by now. I harbor hope they have made up for the time lost and have reached the stars by now. Unfortunately, I could never know what became of them," he finished on a frustrated note.

"And how does that relate to us?" Akane asked with poorly hidden hostility. Necessity she could understand, but him vaporizing Setsuna almost off-hand... "Why that world?"

"Why it?" Ahs-Asch said with a start, waking from his reverie. "Let's say, it left a... trail your magic can anchor to. It's bound to planets and the sun, right? So if you nudge it towards the corresponding planets and sun of that world... After that, it's as simple as invoking the wish-fulfilment aspect of your magic. It's not what your magic is about, but my analysis suggests that you probably could control this aspect in a pinch. If not, or if you try that with any other world... then you die by failing to recreate your bodies.

"Excellent!" Ranma approved. "You see? You can, when you put effort into it!"

(シーンブレイク)

March 2011. Translated May 01, 2014. Edited August 12, 2014

 **Ding!** Tropes unlocked:  
Anyone Can Die  
Chekhov's Gun Deus ex Machina  
Self-Sacrifice Scheme  
Shaggy Dog Story  
You Can't Go Home Again

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— ryuumon (153 corrections)  
— LawOhki  
— OSMQEP  
— Orphus users (172 bugs so far)


	24. Things The Heroes Weren't Meant to Know

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled**

 **Chapter 24,  
Things The Heroes Weren't Meant to Know**

(シーンブレイク)

((a day ago))

A modest foyer. Beyond its windows there is a titanic mountain range seems to support the sky itself. Almost entirely white, it is much higher than any of Earth mountains.

Setsuna is sitting in an armchair clad in a fluffiest bathrobe that reaches her feet. She is content sipping tea from a delicate cup. Her entire body is bandaged, at times she winces from pain from some or other awkward motion. But never the less she is glad to be out of the medical tube she had to float in for around a day while her burnt skin was being grown back. Her question to Ahs-Ahch to how did he find her had been replied with curt "stumbled by accident".

Now her benefactor is pacing, erupting with a lengthy monologue that verges on verbal diarrhea. Setsuna is waiting patiently for the moment when everything that had accumulated inside him pours completely out.

"..and not only that, I also have to fight those I am saving! It's simpler when the world is already included in Ahs, I then have the ability to pause any fragment of it stopping the local time. I lost count of how many millions of people I have frozen like that, gathering dust in storage until I have time to unfreeze them and beat it into their stupid heads that all I want for them is their own good. But the piles are only growing so far."

Setsuna replies with a questioning look.

"Well, they usually yell that whatever disaster I face is god testing them and that I am preventing them from getting to kingdom of heaven," Ahs-Asch explains with irritation. "Even though no one, not a single time, could provide me with any reliable proof. All the facts, all the logic, all the laws of physics tell me that when a man dies, he ceases to exist. The end, period. But still there are... individuals," He spits the last word with disgust, "like that madman whose base I had to first protect, then destroy." He waves his arm in irritation. "So, when I caught him and took him by the gills to ask a few questions... It turned out he was planning a full extermination of mankind to join his wife — who was long dead and thus non-existent. I was thinking at first he had a matrix of her personality stored somewhere. But it turned out, he hadn't. Her soul, he tells me, is still there, in Unit One, and will be resurrected with the rise of a man-made god. And every worthy man will resurrect too. I then tell him, where's that soul of yours, could you show it to me? Or at least the basic theory of resurrection mechanics? And he replies with utter, clinical nonsense. I barely restrained myself from flattening him!" Ahs-Ahsch falls silent, to regain his composure.

"So you do not believe in the existence of souls?" Setsuna asks, shocked.

"What I believe in or not doesn't matter when lives of millions and billions are on stake," Ahs-Ahsch replies harshly. "I only accept steel-hard facts, there's no other way." He lets out a sigh, his shoulders slumping under the load of responsibility. "I had investigated this matter with utter seriousness, using all my resources, which count for a lot, to find at least indirect evidence of existence of this so called 'Creator', souls, of afterlife. But I found none. Not a single one. Every, imagine this, every lead proved to be false. The magic and the spirit energy have a strictly material nature and can be explained scientifically... Although to comprehend the generalized laws of physics that include magic, a mere human would have to twist their mind... But still, it all fits specific formulas."

"This facet of reality is familiar to me," Setsuna says with a nod, "even if the exact details are beyond my grasp."

"Men of faith — and in external worlds where time isn't locked, prophets and visionaries as well — act purely by the force of their own faith that activates their hidden reserves. Human body has an amazing number of these: there are circuits in the brain able to affect time, and space, and gravity. Even in our sad universum, idiot savants pop from time to time who manage to build working Ahs-constructs in their subconsciousness. Moving on. Reincarnation could be explained scientifically as effect of multi-dimensional interference of event waves creating standing maximums at specific points of spacetime. These are in facts concentrated packets of coincidences, a mockery of randomness when a chaotic process creates a structure correlating strongly with one that had existed before. If you tweak reality, this could work for one person. Maybe for a dozen. But reincarnating a couple hundred is too much for the laws of probability. By the way, these also have such properties as flexibility and viscosity, all finite values." He sighs.

"The mechanistic theory of reincarnation is familiar to me," Setsuna replies. "Although, reincarnating thousands is quite possible if reality is... nudged in a certain way."

"That's just basics of reality warping," Ahs-Asch replies absent-mindedly. "But the problem, as you can see, that after comprehending all these mechanics you find that there is no place left for God. The one with capital "G". Because I know many gods in the pagan sense. A fascinating bunch, most of them. But they are all strictly material, in the wider sense of this concept. So the entire volume of data available to me tells me that there is no God but me. At least in the limits of Ahs." He sighes bitterly, noisily. "At times I wish that was not true. Because I'm completely unsuitable for the role! At rarer moments I allow myself to hope that that _is_ ·not true..." He falls silent for a long time, unmoving like a metallic knight statue. Then he pulls himself together and continues: "The laws of Ahs are affecting the thought processes of everyone inside the system, so that you know. For example, sentient beings that aren't Ahs-users cannot have thoughts that could eventually lead to destabilizing Ahs. It's fundamentally impossible.

"What?" Setsuna is utterly shocked for the first time in a long time.

"How, did you think, the system manages to hold in check such irresistible force as human desire to make things better? As a result, most human societies stagnate when their progress hits the impossibility — or, more precisely, improbability — of inventing something that could harm the system. Bam, and there's a glass ceiling. And the inventor who could think such a thing up simply isn't born. The progress simply turns sideways, creating strangest things at times... Oh, right. Why am I telling you this. Even I, in theory, could be bound by similar limitations. In which case I would be unable to form a thought that would lead to me realizing these limitations. Maybe that proverbial Almighty is simply sitting outside of the scope of my understanding. But until I get an iron-clad proof of His existence — or, at least, of existence of such things as afterlife and reincarnation — I will keep doing what I consider saving worlds and people from ceasing to exist." Ahs-Ahch falls silent for a short while, then adds with irritation: "No matter how the prophet sorts fume and call me a 'spawn of Yog-Sothot'."

Setsuna doesn't have a reply to that, so Ahs-Ahch continues: "I realize, of course, I'm not suitable to be the highest judge. But refusing the role is technically impossible. Just don't ask me how I managed to blunder into the title, that's an embarrassingly stupid story... But I can't transfer this burden to another without destroying Ahs in the process. Nor can I simply go freeing worlds at whim. The system is too hard-stabilized, with too many homeostatic feedback chains. I'm simply not skilled enough to defeat it on my own. But there's no one beside me able to even think about that. Besides, even without that handicap, I'm isolated. I can't even socialize with anyone, the allure of absolute power is too strong. Even the most firm ones buckle in the end asking me for something! I wouldn't mind, but if I let myself agree, this process will continue trending up! While there is only one of me, I can't clone myself. I had to create a totalitarian hierarchical system to have at least a semblance of control. In some places I roped in old users, in others I uplifted new ones to the ranks... But there are thousands of worlds, so there are too many levels in the pyramid of command. Personal inspections are necessary. But how could I carry them out if everyone learns instantly of my arrival? My power is too distinct, it always causes a planet-wide resonance. Petitioners stampede, everything turns upside down, doomsday sects awaken... I have even researched external universes to see how _normal_ ·gods deal with this sort of things. No use. None of their methods would work for me, the conditions here in Ahs are too specific. Everything revolves around me as the main focus. One careless action and the world unravels like a knit-work with one thread pulled out. I can't even have a material form.

"What about your current form?" Setsuna asks, surprised.

"My current one?" He surveys himself absent-mindedly. "Oh, this. It's a kind of virtual projection. This shape isn't strictly material, just a collection of folds in space-time shaped like a suit of armor. Addressing someone as a disembodied voice is inconvenient, you know."

(シーンブレイク)

((the present))

"Pity you won't stay," Ahs-Ahsch said. "There are too few good, trustworthy operators... But getting stuck here as a reward for saving your world from a fate, I dare say, worse than death, would have been unfair. I'll get my new operators somehow. After all, Stalin and Hitler alone are worth a dozen... Here, I added the manufacturing function of creating anything you could think of to your medallion. The interface is a bit unfinished, though, as usually only Level One users have access to this, but they control it with a mental link you simply do not have."

"What would we need this for?" Ranma asked, raising one brow. "Aren't we leaving? Then why this sudden generosity"

"Well, I thought you just might want to take a walk before you depart," he replied. "The world I set aside for your departure is clean from most of usual post-apocalyptic dangers, its natural wilderness quite majestic. Well, as I'm nigh omnipotent, this is not generosity but a trifle. I don't give this function to everyone for the same reason you do not let five-year olds play with nukes. I believe you four are responsible enough."

"You love to help people, don't you?" Ranma asked.

"Quite. If only I could _really_ ·help. For instance, by just evicting everyone into external universes, leaving Ahs empty of sapient beings. But alas..."

"Yeah, yeah," Ranma replied. "Golden touch, I remember. More like a crappy touch, to me."

Ahs-Ahsch froze, emitting a strange sound. Was he snickering? "That's... That's a _very_ ·good description, thank you. Now excuse me, I have a multiverse to run." He vanished by collapsing into a dot.

(シーンブレイク)

((a day ago))

"I have to leave you," Ahs-Ahch apologizes. "Duty calls. But I just recalled you working as éminence grise of your world? There is someone I think you will find interesting to talk to."

A blond man of athletic build enters the foyer. His features are strong-willed but unremarkable. "A-Asch, he offers politely. Glad to meet you."

"Pleasure is mine," the emerald-haired woman replies. "Setsuna Mei-oh."

"You do, in some sense, know him," Ahs-Ahsch says.

A-Asch moves his hand in front of his face, giving himself his true features and hairdo for a moment. Then he returns the guise.

"It can't be!" Setsuna exclaims. "I thought, resurrection is impossible?" She turns toward Ahs-Asch.

"You see," he replies, "this is a singular, unique case. When a world enters Ahs, the state of some of its parts is sometimes saved in the system. It's enough then to request specific information to recreate any object as it was in that unique moment. If you outline a person while highlighting the zone, it works like resurrection. But in reality, it's creating a copy."

"I see," Setsuna says. "By any means, I should not delay you any longer."

Ahs-Asch disappears collapsing into a dot.

"Excuse me," A-Asch says as he sits down into a chair at a low table across her. "As I understand, you are familiar with my... counterpart in your universe?" He summons a cup of tea. "Knowing our master, I'd dare to suppose that the story of my alter-ego in your world is no better than mine. So he hopes I draw a sort of... lesson from this."

"Alas, that's true," Setsuna replies scrutinizing him thoughtfully. "My work was to... direct the course of history towards a particular goal."

"And of course a part of that job was keeping one arrogant idiot alive," A-Asch states bitterly.

"Excuse me?" Setsuna asks him, inwardly amazed of how quickly he figured that out.

"That is a given," A-Asch tells her. "Looking back I see it with merciless clarity that I was an idiot. A smart idiot, unfortunately. And such a convenient tool for any higher powers. It's not surprising that the story of my tremendous failure is almost identical in all known worlds whatever power have been affecting the history, from powerful spirits and mason conspiracies to blind, random chance... But allow me to ask you, what was your goal?？

"Resurrection of an ancient kingdom of magic. Or, more precisely, preparing grounds for the reincarnation of its citizens, warriors and Princess." Setsuna falls silent for a while. "The task was complicated by being fixed to a certain magical node, in the place where Tokyo emerged later. As well as being fixed to a certain time period, plus-minus six years, and to a very specific social setting... Which entailed the necessity to create a very specific society."

"So you were directing the evolution of the Japanese nation from the shadows?"

"Oh no," Setsuna corrects him. "I _created_ ·the Japanese nation. First directing the migration of Koreans, then adding strife into their relations with Ainu, so that the mix wouldn't turn out too peaceful... It's weird to know that identical Japans have emerged in in other worlds, without my intervention."

"Yes, the number of coincidences defies any explanation," agrees A-Asch. "We haven't come even close to understanding this phenomena so far."

"Most probably, it's a global resonance of sorts that exists in the multiverse. These may be above my understanding, but I have met similar phenomena... For example, the match between the words 'seraa' and 'sailor' and the details of certain outfits..."

(シーンブレイク)

((the present))

Ahs-Ahsc is floating in front of an one-sided portal, watching.

There's a kaleidoscopic lobby of a transport node on the other side of the portal. Ranma, Akane, Ami and Usagi are standing there fiddling with the medallion.

"Farewell, my dear youngsters," Ahs-Ahsch says tiredly. "You absolutely shouldn't know the cost of acquiring the interactor and the very possibility to contact me. You had acted as blind pawns of this mindless machine. You had upheld, unknowingly, its largely pointless geass of 'preventing the invention of means of travel between worlds that do not involve transport nodes'. But what could be more efficient and _economical_ ·than liquidation of the inventor? But enough. It would be over for you soon... Leave, but let's the knowledge of the cost remains here."

(シーンブレイク)

((a little while ago))

Floating in his virtual techno-astral, Ahs-Asch opens an one-sided portal. He just received summons from a user who had collected the seven tokens. He is performing a quick research of their actions to answer prepared.

Under the merciless rays of the sun unshielded with an atmosphere, a withered mummy floats in the black void, dressed in a stylish pants suit of a deep indigo colour. The skull is grinning mirthlessly, the skin taut against it, surrounded by mane of gray hair. Coloured with magic, it returned to its natural state when its owner spent the last of her magic reserves fighting for her life. A mage staff with a crystal ball in its top is still clutched in a withered hand.

"I'm too late here too," Ahs-Asch states with dismay. "I hope the audience with me would be worth it, whoever they are."

(シーンブレイク)

((the present))

Casting the last glance at the four girls, Ahs-Asch switches the portal.

A short bald man, dressed in a richly decorated robe of corny purple color, is sitting at a massive wooden deck — a great opulence for his world — writing on a magical tablet: "..so, opened it onto the pseudoplane of elemental ether." He stops for a moment, lost in thought. "It's very opportune these nitwits screwed up when drawing the circle. The backslash was so devastating I don't even have to clean up my own additions. So. You, my convenient little scapegoats, are going to be put to court martial. Causing the death of our lead scientist, the bastards... Finally, finally the old mummy gets her deserved posthumous respect! I had enough her screwing my brains, I could barely wait..." Smirking, he continues writing.

Ahs-Ahsch keeps watching him, invisible and unheard. Then he exclaims suddenly, with unexpected fierceness: "No! From _this_ , you will not profit!" He begins assembling a command with sharp, wide gestures. "It is time for me... As the existence of souls is a proven reality... My views of the uniqueness of the personality information, my views of irrevocability of death, must be _revised_."

For some time he keeps making his gestures, then finishes with a powerful, sweeping motion like he is axing something: "Thus I remove from myself the limitation 'thou shall not kill' I had placed myself."

Invisible threads of control circuits wrap around Lukhyt, finding paths through time to the set point in the future, finding loopholes in the lab assistant brains, switching a neuron here, neuron there with quantum fluctuations.

The bald shorty shivers from a sudden chill along his back.

"So you felt that," Ahs-Asch notes with venom. "Even though it's theoretically impossible. Fine, that's one more proof."

(シーンブレイク)

((a hour ago))

Ahs-Asch opens his one-sided portal investigating a sudden system request "Disable extraneous cosmology support for Ahs-In-208? Yes/No". It doesn't bode well as usually such things translate to 'everybody died'.

A dark corner of some storage room. There is an autonomous suspended animation pod, a body is visible through clouded liquid in the glass cylinder.

Ahs-Asch makes a short gesture bringing data overlays atop the visual image. Alas. However advanced the technology of this world was, it wasn't designed for one and a half centuries. Despite all the effort of the narrow-minded nanomachines, the cells were dying one after another until the body died, shrinking in the healing liquid. What is now floating in the pod is an especially well-preserved mummy.

The pod is still working, most of its mechanisms online. The receiver had tried honestly to upload the personality data it had received recently into the dead brain. Ahs-Asch sees its report: 'alarm, information loss 99.9999percent'. But the creators of the pod haven't thought of making a backup copy. They thought the perfect reliability of an Ahs-construct serving as the mind transfer medium should forestall any problems.

Were there someone watching the pod, had they think timely on redirecting the receiver to one of thousands artificial bodies in storage, still in working condition... But there was no one to watch and care. There is no living soul left in this world, the interspace rocketeers are no more.

The Ahs core had noted the death of the last sapient inhabitant, that's the reason behind that request.

Alas, after the fact again.

Yes, he replies using his virtual interface. The properties of that world change, the ki factor is reset to zero. Soon life in that universe will become impossible and the last bacteria will die. After that, only the dead mechanics of Ahs will be holding the dead-world from non-existence.

(シーンブレイク)

((the present))

The four girls stepped from the portal to a tropical beach. The portal closed behind them, cutting the way back. From now on, they could only open a portal towards the exodus point. Well, or a portal back to this beach if they decided to linger. But they couldn't get to any other of Ahs worlds anymore.

"By the way, what was he talking about Stalin and Hitler?" Ranma remembered a detail she hadn't paid attention to before. "Weren't those historical figures of sorts?"

"They were not just 'figures'," Ami corrected her, "but the most infamous dictators. During the World War Two, one was leading Germany, the other Russia. They were great leaders. One had conquered almost entire Europe with the forces of a relatively small and weakened country. The other had defeated him, then defeated our greatest land army in China."

"Weren't they great villains?" Akane asked, doubtful. "I think, I remember something of sorts from the school course of history."

"Politics is always muddy," Ami replied. "History is written by victors, so their defeated enemy always turns out to be a villain. Sometimes, retrospectively... Don't look at me like that, these aren't my thoughts. I have been taught by Rei. She has a bone to pick with the politics, as you know. We cannot say if they were villains or heroes. To answer that, we'd have to return home and spend several years researching. Maybe even decades. But we—"

"I know, I know." Akane interrupted her with a sigh. "We have no way back."

"I hope he knows what he is doing," Ranma grumbled, "taking these 'great leaders' into his service."

(シーンブレイク)

((a day ago))

"Mind if I join you?" A short, lanky man enters the foyer, his clean shaved face unremarkable. He looks like a typical business shark. Or, more likely, a successful Mafia boss: business sharks don't usually have such piercing gaze.

A-Asch's face reflects mixed feelings. "Allow me to introduce: J-Asch. Setsuna Mei-oh. My alter ego's guardian angel in their world, so to speak."

Setsuna scrutinizes the newcomer, then shifts her gaze to A-Asch watching his reaction. She then addresses J-Asch: "Comrade Ivanov?"

"You are quite insightful," J-Asch replies.

"Oh, that's an exaggeration," Setsuna protests. "It's enough to know our welcoming host that the direction of his thoughts becomes obvious. He just couldn't have helped to try copying _everyone_."

"You are right," J-Asch says. "He did just that. Unfortunately, Roosevelt had expired not long before the merging point. Churchill refused on principle. Hirohito and Togo both refused saying 'I'm not the one you want'. As a result, Ahs-Ahch had postponed this matter until he figures who was the real leader of Japan. Only we two remain."

"So you both decided to cooperate on your own free will?" Setsuna clarifies.

"Natuarlly," J-Asch replies. "Ahs-Asch needs voluntary assistants. And he is always following the principle that every sapient has right to decide what to do with their lives... In answer to the question I see you wishing to ask: Yes, many things here are against my principles. Including the necessity to work in the same team as my colleague here. But looking at things reasonably... First, I'm a copy. An extra life, gifted to me by coincidence, where I am irrevocably separated from my former duty and from the country I had been serving. My original there had lived his whole life to the end, fulfilling his duty. Second, Ahs-Ahsch put not a small effort into rescuing my world from Ahs. So I am grateful to him for that. I am sure, my country will have overcome the aftermath of the forced century-long stagnation—"

"That's not meantioning such, ahem, trifles as eternal youth," A-Asch injects. "However, for me that only makes Ahs a combination of purgatory and hell. I always remember... Never forgetting. What I was striving for, how I was trying to make the life of my Homeland better... And the failure it ended with. I _failed_ ·the task put on my shoulders by Providence. I failed to walk the razor edge forged from good intentions. Yes, I know, Ahs-Asch is scientifically disproving it and refuses to believe in its existence. But he himself is a tool of higher powers, like me. And who I am to flee unto death like a coward? My punishment would only be made worse."

(シーンブレイク)

((the present))

A featureless office styled after the 70's of the twentieth century. Beyond its windows there's the same snow-white mountain range of titanic proportions.

"Did you have to disclose our true names so off-hand? They would be interacting with the worlds of Ahs for some time yet." A-Asch frowns, crossing his hands at his chest, which makes his impressive muscles flex. He is wearing his working face: attractive, nordic, but completely dissimilar to his historical persona. The blond turns to J-Asch for support. But the other man is smoking an expensive cigar, his face completely devoid of emotions. Unhurriedly straightening his impeccable black suit with thin white stripes, he then meets A-Asch gaze. The big guy averts his eyes: despite his outward calm and unremarkable figure, J-Asch is much more seasoned.

"Oh, don't worry abou that," Ahs-Asch pipes in, distracted from whatever he was busy with. "They will be traveling through scarcely populated areas..." He falls silent to continue imitating a statue of himself.

"Scarcely populated?" A-Asch is still sceptical. "Rumors, as you know, have unsurpassed penetrating ability. Even when no one is helping spread them."

Ahs-Ahsch continues standing there unmoving like an idol.

"All right," A-Asch gives up. "But if it gets out, we have a deal. You deal with all associations of holocaust victims, or whoever else pops out, by yourself. That is not my pain in the ass."

"There wouldn't be a need, everything is worked out in advance." Ahs-Asch turns to face himn but forgets to move his legs. The carpet pulls taut wrapping around his feet. "But there's still the unpleasant matter in hand do discuss. Namely, your efficiency."

A-Asch lowers his head, his jaw muscles clench. "Yes, I snapped again," he admits, his voice dull. "Unforgivable! I'm ready to carry any punishment."

"Then here is your assignment," Ahs-Asch replies immediately, as if he was expecting this. "See this world ID... Yes, it's one of those that our bringers of bad news had passed through. The world is one big mess. There is no transport node, there are almost no users. There is no connection between the human enclaves and no top-down command structure. The user interface is ruined only slightly less than completely. So go there and clean it up. Don't return until you are done. To sweeten the pill, approximately thirty thousand years have slipped by there. The humanity underwent radical changes. As a result, there are no Jews. I stress this, not a single one. I had scanned it, I guarantee they don't even remember what a 'Jew' is. So treat this assignment as a vacation of sorts, a chance to heal you frayed nerves."

Then he freezes again.

"I thank you," A-Asch says, managing to not show relief in his voice. He makes a brief half-bow. "That's more than I deserve." Turning his suit into a Waffen SS field uniform, he turns around sharply in a military fashion and marches away with a formal step.

J-Asch just nods in approval. On the surface, Ahs-Asch may look like a typical absent-minded professor, overly naïve and out of it. But that impression is deceptive. The acting god has an excellent grasp and is a good judge of character, able to find a fitting place for everyone. Had he get his hands on Satan, he'd rope even him for the common good. Honestly, in J-Asch's eyes Satan is more sympathetic than his former enemy. But... Ahs is such a place where one doesn't choose his companions in misfortune. Ahs-Asch does the choosing, and does it excellently so far, despite his shortcomings. Such as absent-mindedness. His habit of working with huge streams of information and rely on virtual visualizators leads to an epic feat of forgetting various 'small' and 'insignificant' details. Thus the Ahs-Ahch's companions bear the burden of watching that he doesn't miss what he absolutely shouldn't.

"Should we watch that they don't interact with anyone?" J-Asch asks.

He has time to lit up a new cigar while waiting for an answer.

Finally the metallic statue comes to life: "There is absolutely no need. I made their hyperloop specifically so that they don't meet anyone. There won't be anyone for a few thousand kilometers around, with a large safety margin. That was a boundary condition for the breakthrough point anyway."

"You expect complications?" J-Asch asks, holding his cigar in hand.

"I wouldn't call that complications..." Ahs-Asch freezes, performing some calculations. "Just some small side effects. Twenty of thirty megatons, no more."

"Really." J-Asch flicks his cigar. The ash vanishes into thin air.

"Yes," Ahs-Asch replies absent-mindedly. "The process is started, there's no need to watch over these four anymore." He sighs sadly. "But that wasn't why I summoned you." His voice becomes angry and vitriolic. "A problem arose in the system. Of the personnel-related sort, perfect for your skill set. Many users, while fitting the system requirements, fail to fit the requirements of morale and ethic..."

The former great dictator, now Ahs-Lord level one, is listening to the zeroth one's assignment, and his eyes lit up with interest that bodes ill for the corrupt figures like the late man-eating gourmet. After all, even freebie immortality is meaningless if you don't fight evil for the sake of better future. Finally, an opportunity arises for him to apply all his considerable leader skills.

Ahs-Asch is listing the objectives lengthily, with great nitpicking. As is fitting for someone whose careless word could destroy worlds.

"All right," J-Asch agrees. "I downloaded the lists and biographies, I will begin at once." He makes a pause to think, then dematerializes his cigar and adds almost off-hand: "Pity we can't resurrect Lavrenti."

Such an almost too-obvious trial balloon.

"Oh!" Ahs-Asch livens up, glad to change the subject to a technical one, more interesting to him. _Just as planned._ ·"Abou that... I got an idea..."

No, there is nothing good awaiting the corrupt Ahs-Lords. Even those of level one. Where J-Asch would be not enough — together with B-Asch, if Ahs-Asch's idea works — the Zeroth one will come into action himself, demonstrating the mother of Kuzma to those who overstepped the limits too far, along with the winter quarters of crawfish and everything that comes with that. Crushing any creepers of corruption and democracy with iron fist.

(シーンブレイク)

((a day ago))

"In that branch, the victory belonged to communists," Setsuna is telling, "to whom you are so allergic. Joining forces with the Soviet Union, they finished the capitalism off without much trouble. As a result, Japanese Soviet Socialist Republic joined the USSR. That variant's social settings were in some ways preferable, but Usagi born and raised in USSR would never be able to _rule_. She has no desire to rule in all variants, but the target variant recitifies that with traditions and the duty of a samurai / feudal lord / princess, as well as the other girls' duty to their liege. Coupled with her desire to protect everyone, that corners her into the role of Queen leaving her no choice. But in the variant I was just talking about, they ended as a team of simple Soviet superheroes serving their Homeland."

"All right," A-Asch asks her with sick fascination. "What happens if I'm liquidated in the end of the thirties?"

"There were quite different variants. But in general, the Europe sank into war earlier when no one was ready for it. The war itself turned out much bloodier in most variants. There are cases where Poland and France invade Germany and divide it between themselves. Then they, together with Britain, crush USSR before their union deteriorates into infighting. Then there are variants where Germany defeats both Poland and Britain, while Soviet Union rots from inside to the point it is toppled by dwarfs like Finland. Everything depends on how the pieces are arranged and on the fate of your colleague. In any case, Europe comes out of war enervated while Soviet Union falls apart. Japan grabs vast uncontrolled territories and swells into a Great Japanese Empire. After that, there are only two ways: either the conflicting interests discharge in the fifties in a nuclear war against United States, leading to destruction of Japan. Or it continues existing as an aggressive, nationalistic country. Poisoned by the ideas of national superiority, Usagi builds... Well, whatever you would have built, but squared. An utopia 'for master race only', a hell on earth for everyone else.(note 1)

"It's a pleasant thought to know you weren't the biggest of evils. But that's a dubious honor... What about forties? When we have already woken the bear?"

"In 41, as weird as that may sound, most branches give liquidation of your colleague as a result of increased struggle between the military leaders of the Reich. As a result, the Reich has a Pyrrhic victory. Then vultures come. What follows is almost the same as the previous variant. But 42 and further on give a different picture. At first, the effect is minimal, but closer to the end of the war, changes accumulate. Quarrels in the leadership, morale loss - and Soviets win a year earlier, grabbing the entire Europe up to Straits of Dover. That exacerbates a conflict of interests with Unites States that get not a crumble of the European pie. As a result, Russians give Americans no hand in freeing the China from the Japanese army. USA fight Japan much longer and bloodier, because the nuclear bomb is still a year away. The mutual brutality keeps increasing until there is almost nothing left of Japan."

"And that from liquidating me alone?" A-Asch is amazed. Then he adds with sarcasm: "With proofs like these, one could start believing in their divine purpose again."

"Not exactly divine," Setsuna agrees. "Without neutralizing the 28 attempts on your life—"

"17," A-Asch corrects her. "In my world, there were 17."

"That's only those you know about," Setsuna disagrees. "Although I have to admit, some discrepancies are unavoidable. More so that there was a blind chance in your world instead of me. Take, for example, that case when I had to create a channel for natural energy to reinforce the table leg—"

"That table leg, alas," A-Asch interrupts her, "did it job in my world without any natural energy."

(シーンブレイク)

((the present))

"Such a nasty breed," the worn out Ahta was grumbling, trudging along the embankment towards the drawbridge. "How did they manage to spawn in such numbers!" The blond wiped his slime-covered hands against his pants with tired irritation. "Those guys too. Coulda given me an assistant for such an important business... No, scratch assistant, they should have given me a couple of cats! The penny pinchers." He sighed. "But who was that bastard that released snails from their pen? On the other side of the oasis, to boot... If we catch him, we'll pull his arms out, that's for sure. We almost kissed goodbye to a whole sector of carrot—"

He was interrupted with sharp crackling, like that of a forming portal leading to a pseudoplane. Ahta stared up in shock. A few meters up in the air, to the right of him, black lightning was rapidly weaving a matte-blue disc.

"Impossible!" the cursed girl exclaimed in shock, sure in her knowledge that such a portal could not be opened without a setup the size of a house and a very complex spell circle.

"Impossible!" Lukhyt exclaimed in shock as he fell out of the portal, sure in his knowledge that there was no way for a portal from the lab cave to lead to the same plane.

A moment later, the bald shorty let out a shriek of animal terror as he realized that he appeared in the air right above the...

Ahta made a motion to help, but it was useless. Too far out of reach. With a harrowing scream, Lukhyt fell down, down, below the railing. With a quiet splash, the sparkling waters of the Source closed over him.

Ahta jumped back dodging the sparkling droplets. Then he rushed to the railing.

What reemerged on the surface was in no shape a man anymore. The ugly, lumpy mass looked like it was boiling, swelling up: the rabidly dividing skin cells were defying the conservation laws, creating mass from nothing. In a couple seconds the bloated mass, thrashing in agony, grew to several hundred kilograms. It began bursting, spitting bloody lumps that kept growing and twitching in the Source waters like sparkling, taut cancerous growths. The water of Life in lethal concentrations got inside, and the gigantic chunk of meat was gored from inside with a thicket of chaotically growing bone protrusions.

It seemed that the process was unstoppable, that the entire Source would end filled up with a mass of rapidly growing flesh. But a couple more seconds later the cells began dying, unable to withstand the strain. The rabid flesh was sparkling stronger and growing slower. Then it began dissolving bit by bit into motes of light, losing its shape in the sparkling waters like a blob of slime, vanishing into light, leaving only crystal clear water behind. The giant tangle of bones resembling a three-meter wide tumbleweed was the last to sink, dissolving slower due to having many inorganic components.

"I... I'd say, a good riddance, but..." Curling up beside the railing, the hardened surveyor who saw many bad deaths in her life, Ahta parted with his lunch.

(シーンブレイク)

((a day ago))

"Build a utopia?" A-Asch asks with disbelief. "Easily! It's enough to find an uninhabited island... Or better, an uninhabited planet. On the other side of the galaxy. But building that utopia on Earth? Without having to fight half the world? Just believe my experience, it would happen by itself, even without any militaristic rhetoric. Envy is a horrible destructive power."

"Yes, that trap is quite treacherous," Setsuna agrees. "My charge — I dearly hope she could be freed without losing too much — is yet to learn all of this on her own, gaining bitter experience. As soon as she begins building her Crystal Millennium, all the advocates of humanitarian values and proponents of democracy are going to fall upon her like a pack of rabid dogs. No matter what she wishes, she would have to begin building peace on Earth from starting the World War Three. I'd like to hope she could manage to avoid the Great Freeze. Although the probability of such an optimistic outcome is low."

"The same situation I had found myself in," J-Asch agrees. "But I did have a great empire and a very opportune historical interval where all the parasites happened to be sated, lazy and complacent while our side was still weak. But even the starting conditions that good weren't enough for a complete, final victory. How would she manage starting with only the Japan?"

"Less than that," Setsuna clarifies. "With only a part of the central Honshu."

"Even more so," J-Asch says. "Only a moral victory could be the real victory in such matters. But the bigger the enemy's superiority in force, the larger is probability to have to achieve a military victory. But the harder it is, the harder it is then to achieve the moral victory. The bitterness and resent tend to linger, all too easy to accumulate. But the Japanese aren't known for their forgiveness. They are even worse at admitting their faults."

"Well," Setsuna begins counting, "first, the immense magical power. In our world, my charge is potentially the strongest in the galaxy. On the level of a lesser god, as our host has pointed kindly."

"That's an argument," J-Asch agrees. "But no more useful by itself than strategic weapons or means of controlling the Internet."

"Secondly," Setsuna continues, "her pathological dislike to fighting. It should help her avoid, and keep others, from falling into the traps the esteemed A-Asch fell to."

The mentioned Ahs-Lord nods in agreement: "Truly. It's so easy to raise the nation with the idea of better life and dignity. But oh so hard to keep away from the temptation to kick every neighbour's asses."

A disapproving grimace appears on J-Asch's face: yeah, right. Hard. It's just enough to have a level head.

"And thirdly," Setsuna finishes, "her Royal Will. The worse the situation, the firmer she upholds her principles. The main of which is 'protecting the people's dreams'."

"An ideology far from the worst," J-Asch agrees. "It's efficient, it's moral, but flexible enough at the same time. To support dreams that do not destroy other dreams upon their realization... I think that's one of the best brief definitions of morality I heard. With these three trump cards... Her case is righteous, victory will be hers."

"If only we could save her and return her home..." Setsuna sighs.

(シーンブレイク)

((the present))

"First," Ranma stated relaxedly as she settled down under a palm tree stretching her legs out, "we are now a clan by ourselves. No, not that. We are, howizzat, the forebears. We can bear whatever we want fored, heh."

"A clan?" Akane asked. "Forebears?"

"Well, or ultimate ronin," the redhead explained stretching her arms behind her head. "It's much easier to accept the inevitable this way, I think. Look, we are torn from our roots irrevocably. There is _no point_ ·in even thinking about returning, because we are stray copies anyway. We have no fate, no duty, no purpose left..." She sighed, sadness flashing on her face. "No relatives..." She cast a side glance at Akane and corrected herself: "Well, except each other, of course. We don't have a goal either."

Akane shivered: to find herself torn away from everything you were considering yourself a part of... Not just from your family, but from the society itself... "But maybe," she demurred, "there are Saotome and Tendou clans in that world as well?"

"And maybe, there aren't," the redhead parried. "In any case, we would be outsiders to them. And nobody knows how did Japan change during these two centuries. We could very well find ourselves outdated anachronisms, like samurai from Sengoku Jidai lainding in the midst of Meiji Restoration."

"But we are still we." Akane wasn't giving up.

"Please understand, we are a blank slate," Ranma replied with the same relaxed couldn't-care-lessness on her face that was lacing her voice. "Everyone who was dictating our path is gone. Duty to the clan? There is no such thing. Duty to the society? There is no such thing. Only we decide now who will we become. And where will we go... The only thing that remains unchanged is my desire to become a man again, so that you can bear my children." She winked at Akane.

"Baka," she replied, blushing.

"You are right on many accounts," Ami agreed. "It's much easier to come to terms with our situation that way. But what are you planning to do now?"

"To fool around," Ranma replied with a smirk, squinting at the sun. "We are now utterly free, we can do everything we want before we decide to make the _step_. Who knows what awaits us in that world? Maybe an endless battle?"

"To fool around?" Ami asked casting a side glance at Usagi who was wandering along the surf, her face sad and absent.

"Yeah!" Ranma proposed merrily. "Let's take a vacation. We deserve it after saving our world and stuff. That gruelling race may have been fun, but it took a lot out of me. So! We are going to play on this beach until we get sick of it." Her eyes lit with a mischievous glint. "We can teach the uncute tomboy to swim while we are at it."

"Eek!" Akane replied with a start.

(シーンブレイク)

2008 .. June 15, 2014. Translated August 08, 2014

 **Ding!** Tropes unlocked:  
Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act  
Red Herring

 **Author's notes:**

 **1**  
Frankly speaking, I'm greatly disappointed with the recent over-simplification of nazism to "swastika bad!". This prevents people from realizing its true nature, from recognizing the vile thing when it rears its ugly head again, under a _different_ ·symbol. Keeps them from realizing that its power is that of a tempting snake, its poison sweet and insiduous.

P.S. The only Ranma fanfic that shows the true nature of this evil is A Duet of Pigtails (a Magical Knights of Reyarth crossover). A bunch of Third Reich occult troopers stuck traveling Astral plane stumble on Cefiro. It ends badly for the magical world as the Nazi start _subverting_ ·its denizens, converting the human ones into their faith.

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— Crystal  
— LawOhki  
— Orphus users (16 bugs so far)


	25. Swimming Lessons

This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, creator of Ranma, and Kunihiku Ikuhara who created Sailor Moon from the work of Naoko Takeuchi.

This story's main home is ｒａｎｍａｆｉｃｓ。ｒｕ／ｆａｎｆｉｃｓ／ｙｏｕｒ＿ｄｅｓｔｉｎｙ＿ｉｓ＿ａｎｎｕｌｌｅｄ／ｅｎｇｌｉｓｈ .

(シーンブレイク)

 **Your Destiny Is Annulled**

 **Chapter 25  
Swimming Lessons**

Remember I told you that the last two chapters consist of flashbacks? Well, I lied.

The author.

(シーンブレイク)

"It's no use," Akane concluded, her voice dejected, when she finished spitting sand out. "It's like there's a curse on me." She sighed rolling onto her back to lie listlessly, sprawled right where her husband had dropped her hacking carcass a minute ago. Waves were washing rhythmically over her legs.

"Hmmm..." Ranma frowned as she sat cross-legged at the very edge of dry sand. She was dressed in the same dark blue school swimsuit, as were they all, including a white name tag on their chests reading "Miyuki". Ranma had cut a plunging neckline through hers as it was a bit too tight for her.

She glanced back along the beach.

Usagi was lying in the shadow of a palm tree on a blanket, staring unthinkingly into the deep blue sky. Her face was radiating serene peace.

Ami was walking along the surf edge, barely visible in the distance. She spent a lot of time swimming during these days of relaxation, probably more than she usually did in a whole year, making around a hundred kilometers in total across the sea. But even she eventually got tired of her favorite pastime.

"I don't think so," Ranma retorted sharply as she turned back to her wife. "But you got one thing right. The methods we've been using so far are useless. We won't achieve anything here. It's time to go on, our friends are growing bored." She made an exaggeratedly wise face, borrowed from her pops. "I'll think of something along the way. I believe you could be taught to swim, young one. It just requires something... radical."

Akane shivered involuntarily.

(シーンブレイク)

"Here we go," commented Ranma when Ami typed the command to open a portal to the place from which they were going to leave with no return.

They all wore identical camou pants and baggy jackets of brownish-green color. As they had found, there was a catch in the seemingly unlimited ability of Ahs to create things from nothing. Formulating a proper definition proved to be too complex even for Ami. The only option that worked somehow was re-creating familiar things they had a contact with sometime in the past. And even that required a good few dozen tries to get the right thing.

The portal closed cutting them off from the sun-burned beach. Darkness swallowed the hall of mirrors, pierced only by dim greenish light of the faraway greenish stars of the medallion screen. The portal opened, in the same arch, flooding the hall with bright pinkish-white light. Usagi shrieked jumping away from it so fast that she slipped on the perfect mirror of the floor and skid face first a bit. Ami hastily closed the portal.

Thirty degrees Celsius below zero after tropical heat are a really strong stuff.

"Let's shaman up some winter clothing then," Ranma concluded as she switched her flashlight on. "Does anyone remember the parkas we took to the North, back on Earth? Those that had burned down?"

Everyone remembered these, so after several failed attempts they all had full sets of winter clothing, as well as a discarded heap of useless stuff ranging from summer school uniforms to unrecognizable trash. After buttoning up thoroughly, they walked out into the frosty day.

"It's so beatiful!" Akane noted with admiration as she surveyed the landscape stretching before them.

A snow-cowered plain of a narrow lake was stretching in all directions, flat hills framing it bristling with dark fir forest. The long lake stretched into distance where the individual trees were blurring into a dark wavy line, barely visible in the frosty haze against the backdrop of low, snow-covered mountains. Sun was hanging low, illuminating the landscape from the right, painting the sky and the haze-shrouded mountains those soft but vibrant shades of pinkish- and bluish-white that only appear during really strong frost.

"Yeah," Ranma agreed. Her wife just vocalized her own thoughts.

Usagi stood there scringing and dancing in place. She shrunk back into her collar so deeply that only her nose was visible from under the hood. Ami took pity on her, shamaning up some scarfs. As a result, there were three figures clad in heavy parkas now, striding forward with their hoods up, and one scarf mummy waddling along them, barely able to see. Her hands were hidden in a thick cocoon of scarves playing the role of a makeshift muff. When the desired item was found by trial and error, making more copies of it was as easy as pressing a button.

Ranma and Akane were walking in front, one after another, switching positions from time to time. They'd like to walk hand in hand, which would be harder, for the sake of training. But they were also beating a semblance of path through the knee-deep snow for Ami, who had a hard time even with their help. In the rear, the checkered scarf-mummy of Usagi was waddling, careening left and right, huffing puffs of seam out of its top making the scarves there frost over.

They surmounted several kilometers in this order when the normal girls started tiring out. They made a stop to let them rest.

"Let us carry you," offered Ranma.

"Is it... far... yet?" huffed from under the layers of scarves. Usagi pulled her mitten-clad hand out the muff and pulled some of the frosted-over scarves down, opening a crack from which her eyes glinted.

"No, we only have to reach that hill." Ami pointed at a hill ahead, prominent with it steepness, its rocky top towering over the forest. "The point of departure is there, at the top."

The mummy was standing in indecision, breathing out small puffs of steam. "Thanks, but no," Usagi's muffled voice reached finally from inside. "I feel like taking a walk, enjoying the view before the end."

"What could you see through all these wrappings?" Ranma injected with sarcasm. "Com'on, open your face. It's not that cold—" She choked with snow, slammed into the ground by her wife. Suddenly, a deep cracking sound scared everyone, starting at their feet and rolling away towards the shore. Akane tensed, her face turning blue from fear. Ami was looking around, listening intently in alarm. The scarf mummy started turning left and right awkwardly with its entire body as it didn't have anything even remotely resembling a head.

"Watch it!" Ranma snapped at her wife after spitting the snow out. "You'll break the ice!" Then she saw that the other girl was already scared out of her wits. The redhead narrowed her eyes, there was a nasty appraising gleam in them. "Can you walk to the shore on your own?" she asked Ami and the mummy as she threw back her hood lined with artificial fur and began unbuttoning her parka.

"I think so," Ami replied glancing at the shore, which was close now. "Will you stay here?" She took a mitten off to rub at her numb cheek with a bare hand. The quiet girl genius may like cold, but here it was so much more than just cold. The frost was sharp, biting. Not to mention the small wind making it worse.

"We'll be training," Ranma explained in a too cheerful voice as she took her parka off holding it out to Ami. "Would you please carry...? Wait, no." She spread the parka on the snow, then sat on it and started pulling her boots off.

"What are you doing?" Akane asked, feeling a terrible apprehension. Hordes upon hordes of icy creeps were marching along her spine.

"I know you two are far from average people," Ami added, alarmed. But walking bare-footed through snow at 28 Celsius below the zero..." She fell silent helplessly, seeing that Ranma haven't stopped with the boots. Throwing her pants and jacket off, the redhead continued until she was standing on the parka nude. At 28 below the zero.

Akane shuddered violently. Ami boggled. The mummy of Usagi squeaked in horror, shrinking into itself with sympathetic shivers. She was feeling cold even looking at this!

"What are you waiting for?" the redhead asked Akane as she danced in place. "Start undressing!" She coiled, bending her legs, then made a huge, around ten meters, leap to the side. "Nnng... Mokou Takabisha!" A ki blast slamming into the frozen lake surface made a three-meter wide hole. Into which hole the part-time girl landed, entering the still subsiding column of water and disappearing below the surface. Everyone kept looking, stupefied, at the chunks of ice surfacing in the three-meter wide ice-hole and the waves calming down after licking the snow off the edge.

There was a dead silence for a good thirty seconds.

A small explosion shattered the ice a dozen meters away. When the water column subsided, there was a much smaller hole. A feminine figure popped up up to her waist as she emitted a mix of a delighted shriek and a battle cry. Then she sunk back. Finally, a head rose above the surface.

"Hey Akane! Come! For how long will you keep undressing?" Ranma yelled merrily. She leaned with her elbows on the edge, her pose exaggeratedly blase. But it was still noticeable that she was practically bursting with a desire to move. "Do you want to learn to swim or not?" Water started freezing on the red bangs, turning them into icicles.

"Of course I do," replied Akane fighting against indecision. "But—"

"Then undress and dive!" Ranma said with finality before diving again.

Akane decided at last. Walking up to the first, bigger ice-hole, she started shedding her clothes.

"Wait!" Ami tried to stop her. "That's insane! Swimming under ice is deadly dangerous...! Not to mention the risk of getting a serious frostbite!"

"R..ranma k..knows what he's d..doing," Akane retorted with conviction, clad only in her panties now. Dancing on the spread parka, twisting like an eel on the frying pan, she clutched her chest with her arms — more against the cold than to cover her breasts. "And I t..trust h..him."

Ranma surfaced in front of them, made a deep breath, then emitted another battle cry. "Ditch the panties," she commanded. "Or they'll freeze to your skin." Akane quickly complied, unable to think of modesty as her teeth were clattering. "And you," Ranma instructed the worrying Ami and the mummy shaking in sympathetic horror, "take our clothes and go to the closest shore." She pointed at a narrow peninsula, its point but two hundred meters away. "Make a fire there... Ah, and shaman up some towels. A lot of them." The red-haired head turned to Akane, yelling with devil-may-care mirth: "Com'on, jump in! I'm safeguarding!" Then she disappeared under the water.

Akane took a deep, shuddering breath. Then she jumped. A sharp cry, a splash, and there was only dark water sloshing in the wide ice-hole.

"It's madness," Ami repeated helplessly as she looked at the chaotic little waves.

"Nuh-huh," the mummy objected, holding a lump of Ranma's clothing with both hands. "True masters always train by meditating under an icy waterfall... Or something like that..." She fell silent for a moment, embarrassed. Her conviction returning, she then continued: "Anyhow! They are training! We have to go to the shore, to prepare that fire and blankets!" Turning around awkwardly, she purposefully waddled through the deep snow towards the peninsula, huffing and puffing with small white clouds and almost falling as her arms were busy.

"But that's a completely insane training then," Ami objected with disapproval as she hastily gathered Akane's clothing. "I know they were never known for their restraint," she said as she hurried after the mummy. "But there are limits..."

Behind them, a dull explosion was followed by the noise of water cascading down to the snow, then Akene's deafening shriek full of terror an exhilaration. They both turned around, but the new ice-hole was empty again.

"To think of it, water is never colder than zero, right?" the mummy said with some doubt in her voice, unsure of her knowledge.

"It's not just the water," Ami disagreed, trying to walk faster through the untouched snow field. "They'll have to get out! Completely wet at this temperature!" She fell silent, saving her breath. Then she couldn't bear it any more so she continued anyway: "I get a feeling that their entire anything-goes school is just plain insane. Like they really know no limits or restraint. Their training methods would make any sane person's hair stand on its ends. No one of them is in any way guaranteed from getting crippled, you know! Take the Neko-ken, for example—"

"You are worried he'd follow in his father's steps," the mummy stated, stopping and making a lumbering turn towards the distraught girl.

"I'm not... Yes." Ami sighed in frustration. "I want to believe he's more prudent, but..."

"But what makes this training that much more dangerous than their previous ones?" the mummy asked as it stumbled but caught itself exhaling a large puff of steam. Usagi was obviously exhausted, but kept stubbornly plowing forward.

"Swimming under the ice!" Ami replied hotly. "It's deadly dangerous—"

"For mere mortals who couldn't break the ice from below?" the mummy interrupted her archly.

There was yet another dull explosion behind them, two voices squealing in unison, full of wild abandon.

Ami would have turned red from embarrassment, if not her cheeks being numb from the biting cold.

(シーンブレイク)

Used to the traditional washing off with cold water, Akane haven't felt the cold at first. It was even warmer down here! A firm hand gripped her calf and started pulling her into darkness, away from the dull greenish spotted glow of the ice - not giving her time to think _where_ ·she was now. Seconds passed, the cold was beginning to burn. The light was slowly dimming, and there was pressure building in her ears. But Ranma, visible as a vague shadow, kept dragging her into the depth. Akane wrenched her leg free, and then the usual panic caught up with her, making her thrash in water, losing her orientation and the remaining air. Her body burning stronger and stronger, her lungs spasming, Akane desperately reached for the faraway glow of daylight. She was thrashing and windmilling, unable of thinking rationally. She was burning inside and out, burning from the cold, burning with desire for a gulp of air! The burning forced her forward like an irresistible force. Her vision was beginning to darken.

Two strong arms grabbed her around her waist, a warm body pressing against her back. Akane was jerked upwards, towards the light that was dimming with each second. There was an explosion that shook her eardrums, then she was thrown out into the blinding light, with such a force that she left the water completely, flying up into the air. The sweetest, priceless air. The frosty cold burned so sharply that the prior trial looked like a joke in comparison. This shook her system up not unlike a mortal battle! Akane took a hasty, shuddering breath. Then she let out a loud yell that was carrying both the terror she just went through and the exhilaration of feeling incredibly alive! But then she was again jerked down by her ankles. Her hands slipping from the edge of ice, she was again dragged into the depth, before even having a chance to catch her breath.

And again there was dark depth and the desperate fight to reach the surface. This time she remembered all the lessons Ranma had drilled into her. She moved swiftly, pushing with her arms, undulating her entire body to utilize her full strength and turn it into motion. An another explosion, she was being pushed towards the surface, then she and Ranma both yelled in unison. Akane suddenly realized that she was caught in the thrill of this insanity! Water was burning, air was burning, her blood was boiling,a and she completely disregarded that part of her mind where prudence lived.

"Next time do it all by yourself!" Ranma whispered into her ear.

"By myself? Whablb—" The redhead didn't let her finish, diving and dragging her under. Akane quickly wrenched herself free, but this environment was still alien to her. She was unable to even see her husband's movements, and soon Ranma's heel slammed into her belly with brutal force, driving the air out of her lungs and sending her tumbling blindly into the darkness. That's it! Recovering from the blow, Akane spent several seconds trying to tell the down from the up. As soon as she regained her orientation, she hurried towards the blurry spotty-greenish surface. There was the ice, finally. But what was next? Her lungs were spasming, her eyes bugging out from the desire to _breathe!_ ·Akane hit the ice with her fist. Water sapped all the strength out of her movement, making it harmless. She rebounded from the ice, sinking back into the depth. She glanced around panicky, but Ranma was nowhere in sight. Truly 'all by yourself'. Her vision was swimming with color spots. Akane got really angry, partly at her husband, but more at herself, for being so slow. She launched "Raitsui Dan" at the resilient ice ceiling. The recoil of the ki blast pushed her even deeper, but there was now a spot of radiant daylight shining overhead! Mustering the last of her strength, Akane reached for it. Finally, she surfaced! She was content to be just bobbing there, taking a great joy in gulping the piercingly burning air. Ranma kept circling her like a shark, and eventually dragged her into the depth again. Did the parasite even go up for air?

This time it went without any stunning blows. Ranma was distracting her, rolling her around. In the end she desoriented her so thoroughly that Akane kept swimming into the depth by herself for some time, before noticing her error. Light was barely reaching these depths, so getting out proved to be as hard as it was the previous time.

Such fun repeated several times, Akane lost count. She finally managed to catch her husband in a hold, launching both of them out of the water to crash down into the snow.

"Ack! Ouch! Let me go, you idiot! It hurts!" Ranma was hollering, pressed into the snow, squirming in a brutal pain hold.

"Oh, and drowning me was so much fun?" Akane growled, twisting the other girl's arm until bones creaked and pressing a knee into her spine.

"Drowning?" There was smugness in the redhead's voice. "It looked to me like you were swimming. And not too bad, at that."

"I was swimming?" Akane asked in disbelieving shock. She froze, still sitting on Ranma's back. "I was swimming!" she yelled in joy as she realized how profound it was. She almost broke Ranma's arm forgetting to release it. "Thank you! Thank you, Kami-sama! Thank you, Ranma!" Tears of happiness were rolling down her cheeks.

"Let me go you idiot!" Ranma roared, convulsing. "Snow! Burns!" She started twisting and thrashing, eventually breaking the hold and throwing the distracted Akane off of herself.

For Akane it was a sharp, sharp transition from uncontrolled euphoria to the realization that falling butt-naked into deep snow at thirty below the zero... _hurt_. A lot. She yelled, jumping up and away from the dire burning cold of the white shroud. She dashed towards the nearest shore, barely touching the ground. She was feeling being boiled alive.

(シーンブレイク)

((a few minutes ago))

"Bugger," Ami swore as yet another dirty and sodden rag flopped down to the snow in front of her. "Why can't I get it right? Time is running out!" She concentrated as hard as she could, gritting her teeth. A loofah materialized out of thin air with a quiet "pop". Ami was on the verge of tearing at her hair. The shore around her was littered with wooden washbassins, plastic washbasins, shampoo flasks, _wet_ ·towels... But a dry towel, even a tiny one, remained an unattainable dream.

"Let me try," Usagi suggested as she returned wit a heap of sticks, barely suitable for a campfire, and one freshly broken spruce branch. "While you could search for firewood." Then she added suddenly, in a whiny voice: "Why have these spruces to be so sturdy, like they made them from iron? I got all sweaty breaking just one branch off."

"Well, I guess there's no harm from you trying." Ami handed her the medallion, having some reservations. "First you push this button here. Then you remember a towel, picturing it in your mind in detail. Then you press this button to create it. And don't you push any other buttons!" she finished in a commanding voice.

Usagi pulled her mittens off to take the freezing cold medallion. She frowned mightily, sticking her tongue out from the side. She tensed, groaning like she was lifting a weight.

Pop, and there was a yellow plastic duck falling into the pile of trash. Usagi gave out a disappointed sigh.

"Keep trying," Ami encouraged the other girl as she pulled mittens onto her frost-bitten hands. She turned towards the forest...

POP!

Ami turned back in panic — Could the meatball head have pressed a wrong button? — in time to see a whole furo bassin falling down onto the frozen lake, splashing hot water around. It wasn't just a basin, but also hefty chunks of the adjacent wall and floor. The combination crashed through the ice, falling apart into tons of broken concrete and tiles. A high wave lapped at the shore dragging most of the trash into the resulting large hole and sodding Usagi's boots.

"Careful!" Ami chided her friend, alarmed. Then she calmed down a bit as she remembered that the bigger the object, the further away from the operator it materializes. "Try not to get carried away, all right? And face the shore, unless you want to risk making a tsunami."

"Don't worry, I got it." Usagi waved her concern away as she stuck her tongue out, trying to imagine a towel.

Ami risked leaving the other girl to her own devices. The girl genius went combing the forest for firewood. But alas, all suitable logs and branches were either frozen solid, wedged deep in the snow — or were still firmly attached as parts of their respective spruces. Usagi's comment was indeed correct, the spruces were _sturdy_. Ami got all tired breaking just a couple dry branches off when a terrible crash from behind made her start. Full of apprehension, she rushed back to the shore, plowing through the snow that was even deeper here, in the forest.

Usagi was standing there unharmed, hitting the button as fast as she could with a reckless cry of "Orya-orya-oryaaa!" At both sides of her there were... There were two small hills. One was pinkish-white and round, the other one consisted of broken wood and other crushed construction materials. Judging by the remains of a roof, this debris was once the entire Tsukino residence. A residence that fell from a considerable height, judging by the fact that the sturdy seismic-resistant Japanese home has practically shattered. Ami quickly figured it out: the house materialized over the treetops, as there was no room for it on the densely overgrown shore. The result was predictable. Ami breathed in a lot of air to berate Usagi thoroughly: the careless girl could have been killed with a broken tree! But then she exhaled it out from the surprise of seeing the right hill.

The right hill consisted of towels. Of dry bath towels. Of an outrageous number of dry bath towels, and there were more coming accompanied with Usagi's relentless battle cry.

"Enough!" Ami shouted at her. "You'll wear the button out!"

The hill was already reaching about two human heights, flowing around the spruces like a surrealistic anthill.

"Huh?" the blond said, coming to her senses. She have been so occupied she didn't even notice pulling the scarfs off her head and pulling the hood down. "Ack! My ears hurt!" She hastily pulled the hood back up.

There was a muffled explosion heard from the lake. Soon, Akane came into view — naked, yelling, her skin reddened, wet snow flaking off her as she was running blindly and frantically. She slipped, plowing through the snow face first, and her scream turned into an almost ultrasonic screech. Jumping up like she was scalded, snow plastered all over her body, Akane dashed blindly, completely off-course. At this moment Ranma ran up to her, her pigtail sticking askew, frozen solid. "Turn right!" The redhead redirected her panicking wife onto the path towards the towel hill with a well placed kick.

"Aaaah-I'mburning-I'mburning‼！" Akane howled, doubling her speed at the sight of the craved target.

They both reached the hill at once, digging in with yells and squeals, rubbing at each other with towels so roughly they soon were beet-red. The towels were raining down like ash flakes from an explosion, soon covering the swimmers completely, hiding them from sight.

The disturbed surface was shifting and buckling with energetic movements underneath, accompanied with cries and moans of relief. Then Ranma's disheveled head popped out: "Bring our clothing here, all right?"

"Err..." Usagi was suddenly very sheepish. "It's kind of just happened that..." She cast her eyes down, fidgeting with her foot in the snow. "Err... Well, we have firewood now!" she proclaimed with a strained cheer as she pointed at the remains of a house.

"Oh. Never mind, then." Ranma's head disappeared into the towels. Then popped up again. "Then make us new clothing!" She disappeared for good.

The surface of towels stopped shifting, the sounds of shuffling and occasional squealing were muffled, barely audible. It seemed that the two crazy swimmers dug themselves quite deep.

"I suppose we have to do it anew." Ami sighed as she took the medallion from Usagi. "Let's see if we can quickly recall things we've created before." She frowned in concentration. But she was soon interrupted. The occasional squeals coming from the haystack of towels have surreptitiously changed in tonality... Becoming not so innocent...

"Let us leave them alone, so they can... dry themselves without any distraction!" Ami proclaimed, blushing, as she shut the medallion closed and started pushing Usagi away into the forest.

"Ah, so that's it! Our love-doves finally got themselves a snugly nest!" Usagi exclaimed, agonizingly direct. She grinned giggling conspiratorially. "Looks like it's going to be _hot_ ·in there, ne, Ami-chan?" She nudged the mortified girl with her elbow and winked.

For Ami, that was the last straw. Unable to hold any more, glowing red-hot, Ami ran away in blind panic. Not even looking where she was going, her burning face covered with her arms, she tried in vain to run away from the images crawling unceremoniously into her mind. These were scandalous by themselves, but then it got worse: Urawa-kun got somehow mixed in! Making a small desperate cry like a wounded hare, her cheeks aflame, Ami rushed on with redoubled effort... There was a flash, her vision exploding in sparks, then she fell onto her back, rough tree bark clearly imprinted on her forehead.

It hurt a lot, but Ami let out a breath of relief as she relaxed in the soft snow. The agonizing apparition went away. She was just lying there, looking into the light-filled sky above the faraway spruce tops. Then sounds of huffing and snow rustling came slowly from a side. Usagi swam into her vision, bent over the supine girl. "Ami-chan‼ Ami-chan, are you all right?" the blond asked with worry. Then exclaimed guiltily: "Ah! Your forehead is bruised! I'm sorry, it's all my fault."

"It's nothing serious," Ami reassured her hastily. "It'll get better soon."

Usagi sighed, then apologized again, her voice melancholic: "Please forgive me. I acted so stupid. I felt so glad that there was someone who hasn't lost their love... I just got carried away."

Ami didn't know how to reply to that. All these days after they rescued her, Usagi held on. But her loss was profoundly irrecoverable. Serenity and Endimion were like two halves of one being, a union that survived the death itself. And now, so stupidly... Like a half cut off the whole, Usagi alone wasn't complete. There was a huge bleeding wound in her soul. Ami was afraid she won't be able to recuperate, waning away despite their best efforts. This was one of the nightmares that kept Ami waking at nights. But what could they do? Even the best doctors are powerless against such wounds.

"I'd go for a walk," Ami said as she stood up, "but with snow so deep..." She remembered Uurawa-kun and sighed wistfully. It was a pity she won't see him again, but that magnetic force, that spark jumping between them — the girl genius turned a bit pink at the thought — it was just an awkward beginning, just an unblown bud. Were they destined to become parts of a greater whole or not, only the other Ami would know. She again felt a shameful relief in knowing how lucky she was, not having found her true love yet.

"Let's make clothing for them first," Usagi reminded her. "Then we..." She eyed the embarrassed Ami critically and declared: "Then _I_ ·will bring it to them. It's better for you to start walking towards that hill right now. I'll catch up."

"All right," Ami agreed reluctantly. "But maybe—"

"With their stamina it would have to be a very long walk," Usagi added, her eyes so impish that Ami clearly saw the blond's future: If she fails to find a new love, she'll no doubt become a matchmaker. A scarily energetic and driven matchmaker. "Maybe we could even make it to the hill-top. They'll catch up with us. They can jump from spruce to spruce like ninjas."

They were interrupted by a shrill shriek from the camp. Ami turned to run there, but Usagi stopped her, manually turning the other girl towards the final hill. "It's just the couple we know," she whispered in Ami's ear, "got so preoccupied that they rolled out into the snow."

Blushing furiously, Ami went to their destination. She was seriously afraid the capillaries in her cheeks would burst.

(シーンブレイク)

Four girls gathered on a rocky hill-top swept with frosty winds. A wavy sea of taiga was stretching all around them. The long, twisty lake and a close mountain ridge from the other side were the only notable landmarks.

Everyone knew that this forest below their feet, this feeling of camaraderie and kinship could very well be the last things they would experience in their lives. They stood there for a long time, observing the winter landscape.

Ami was the only one who understood how insane the plan of their "prison escape" was, how full of weakly based assumptions and leaps of faith. Coupled with using energies able to atomize the entire Solar system. Tense with grim determination, she was checking and double-checking the program.

Usagi was feeling cowardice, as always before the real action started. As always, she was trying not to show it, not to let her comrades down. That was a stark contrast to what she had been at the beginning of her career. Losing her only love... It was so painful, so hopeless. To be honest, she'd prefer to just lie down in some hole and wait for the wolves to eat her. But... the others performed a real heroic deed for her sake. They too have, if unintentionally, lost their goal and purpose. They have lost their home. They, too, have lost their families. Ranma would never see his parents again. Akane, torn forever from her father and sisters. Ami had her mother back there. And all of them lost their friends and comrades forever: Makoto, Minako, Rei, the moon cats, the haughty couple of Outers and their nicest, cutest daughter...

No, she had no right to make the sacrifice of her companions meaningless. It was for them, not for herself, why Usagi was forcing herself to overcome apathy and despair, going on in spite of pain. She was trying to become a different person, to be able to start her life anew, from a blank page.

Still, there was one big, warm consolation. Their loved ones haven't lost _them_. Their home world they lost forever was _safe_. Somewhere infinitely far away, another Ranma and Akane were fighting against their fathers' machinations. Another Ami was busying herself with study, barely seeing her mother. Another Usagi was being hugged by her Mamoru.

The blonde let out a sad sigh. No, she won't give up, won't falter under the onslaught of fate. But it was oh so heavy!

Standing across Ami, there were ruffled Ranma, her expression still a bit glazed, a dreamy smile wandering her face, as well as Akane, full of energy, flushed and a little bristled.

"Here we go, then?" Ranma asked finally.

"Let's go." Ami raised her henshin wand. "Just in case... I am so glad I was your friend." A brief smile flashed on her tense face, a bit strained but sincere.

"What is the probability..." Usagi gulped and reluctantly grabbed her brooch. "Of us not making it?"

"High," replied Ami. "Less than 50 percent but more than 10. Most probably, a solid third. Give or take."

"I love you, Ranma," Akane said as she put her arm around the disheveled redhead's shoulders. "I will always love you."

"I too," the other girl replied quietly. "But we still have our entire lives ahead. We will make it. You'll see! I will find yet a way to be a guy again!"

They moved to stand in a tight circle, facing inward. Ami opened the medallion, entered the last command and put the copper roundel down in the snow, in the center of their circle. Everyone raised their transformation item: Ami and Akane their wands, Usagi her brooch, and Ranma an empty palm turned upwards like she was holding an invisible ball.

"What are we waiting for?" asked Akane.

"The Ahs-construct must reach the design condition," Ami explained. "Now—"

The ground shook. The sky began to darken. A ring of giant claw-like spires rose around the girls, so impossibly huge that they were looking like ghosts in the distance. The pitch black of their darker facets was almost invisible against the pale sky, the feathery stratospheric clouds flowing around their middle. The nearby mountain range was clearly in front of these monstrosities.

"Are these supposed to pop out?" Usagi squeaked, stealing fearful glances at the titanic constructs.

"Ahs-Asch had removed our power limiters," Ami explained, feeling uneasy as well. "These form a barrier, in case an uncontrollable burst happens. We are now feeding a total output of several galaxies to an untested process."

Usagi glanced around nervously. The darkness filling the sky was swirling, forming a huge twister suffused with lightning over their heads. The day had surreptitiously turned into night. Winds blowing wildly were raising the snow up, this blizzard growing in strength to eventually conceal the mountains, the forests and the titanic claw spires alike. There was only darkness left, pierced with flashes of lightning, full of rumbling so low and ominous it was resonating in their very bones.

"Concentrate," Akane told her. "Stand firm, don't be afraid of anything. We can do it."

"Yes!" Usagi nodded, her features reflecting determination.

"It's ready," Ami proclaimed. "The Ahs-construct reached its design condition. Now it is our turn. Everyone remembers what to do?" She cast a glance at each of them. "We transform. We grab each other's hands before the transformation is done. We perform Sailor Teleport into the imaginary point that should be now implanted into our minds."

"Got it, I'm ready." Ranma nodded.

"I..." Akane frowned closing her eyes. "Ah, there it is. I'm ready."

Usagi frowned mightily. Then she stuck her tongue out. Then she made an even more unfitting grimace.

"Search your soul for a point... Filled with purpose." Ami advised her.

"Ah!" Usagi's face lit up with understanding. "Then I know it already. But... There's something..."

"We have to leave our bodies," Ami began explaining in a soft tone. "Consider it a tunnel effect for death... Well, a temporary state. Nothing could be done here, there's no other way. There are barriers in our path that nothing material can cross, only a soul could."

"Supress your self-preservation instinct," Ranma suggested.

"Ah," Usagi said, so quietly she could barely be heard through the roaring of winds. "It's like that time at the North Pole..." She shivered slightly, but not because of freezing cold wind getting under her parka and burning her bare hand holding the brooch. "Then... I'm ready."

"I'm ready," Ami finished. "On the count of three. One... Two..."

Four transformation phrases were shouted in unison. Magic flooded them, a blinding, burning flow vaporizing their clothing and blowing the girls' hair like a hurricane force wind coming from the center of their circle. Four figures, clad in light, grabbed at once at their neighbor's upraised right arm with a transformation item shining radiantly in it.

 _Light_ ·flooded everything. The Earth crust was fading before the onslaught of energy like morning mist under hot sun rays. Even the atoms were torn asunder in this boiling cauldron stretching for tens of kilometers, up to the very ring of limiters. If someone could see this from the Moon, they'd observe a thin, blindingly bright beam of light rushing away from the planet, carrying more energy than Sun radiates in a whole year. The beam disappeared as sharply as it flashed to life. A tiniest fraction of its energy had leaked through the limiters and was now billowing up in a ball of plasma, melting mountains and setting forests on fire for hundreds of kilometers around. When the light finally dimmed, an immense mushroom cloud started its unhurried ascent, heralding the departure of four unyielding souls.

Would they make it to the other side? Those remaining in the cursed multiverse of Ahs would never know the answer.

 **The end**

(シーンブレイク)

July 03, 2011. Translated August 17, 2011. My horrible English of 2011 corrected August 08, 2014.

 **Ding!** Tropes unlocked:  
Bittersweet Ending  
Breather episode  
Glad-to-Be-Alive Sex  
If It's You, It's Okay  
School Swimsuit  
Sequel Hook

 **Thanks for C &C to:**  
— Crystal  
— LawOhki  
— Orphus users (11 bugs so far)

 **IF YOU ARE FOLLOWING THE STORY ONLY, PLEASE FOLLOW THE AUTHOR: THE SEQUEL IS BEING PUBLISED AS A SEPARATE STORY**


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